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A LOOK UPWARD 



BY 



^"7 



SUSIE C. CLARK 

AUTHOR OF "THE ROUND TRIP" "TO BEAR WITNESS" "THE NEW 
RENAISSANCE" ETC. 



"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting 
doors; and the King of glory shall come in." 







Aim C'-tP'iO 



«■' Right * 
toon 



BOSTON MDCCCXCI 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET NEXT " THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE " 

NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 

7lS AND 73O BROADWAY 



' 






Copyright, 1S90, by Susie C. Clark. 
A II rights reserved. 



A LOOK UPWARD. 



Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A. 



J 



TO 
ALL WHO ARE IN BONDAGE, 



THIS 



fHessage of jjreetiom 



IS 



CHEERILY, HOPEFULLY DEDICATED. 



CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Glad Tidings T 

II. The Law of Progress 13 

III. Diverse Receptivity 29 

IV. God and the Soul 42 

V. Spirit versus Matter 55 

VI. Good and Evil 6S 

VII. The Formative Power 79 

VIII. The Bondage of Fear 93 

IX. The Healing Power 105 

X. Suggestions for Treatment 118 

XI. Suggestions Continued 135 

XII. Facts Seldom Recognized 150 

XIII. What Constitutes a Healer J 66 

XIV. Gifts of Healing 1S5 

XV. Spiritual Growth 196 

XVI. Emancipation 210 



A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER I 



GLAD TIDINGS 



Tides have their flood and ebb, day 
alternates with night, summer's verdure 
follows winter's frost, periods of activity 
in the natural world are succeeded by 
intervals of rest. The same analogous law 
controls mental and spiritual planes. The 
law of progress for the race is manifested 
in cyclic waves. The Golden Age is fol- 
lowed by Ages of Brass and Iron, the status 
of the world's thought degenerating to 
material levels only to gain greater momen- 
tum for a still higher growth, a grander 
achievement. 

In the present era a new light seems 



8 A LOOK UPWARD 

dawning upon the world. The fifth cycle 
wanes, and with the coming of the sixth a 
spirit of expectancy pervades the air. Ears 
are quickened to catch a new message, an 
evangel of greater freedom, of enlightenment 
and upliftment, for the race. It is a period 
of spiritual awakening. The stone is rolled 
from the sepulchre of the world's materiality. 
History records that the last quarter of 
every recent century lias been marked by 
some humanitarian effort, by an attempt 
at fraternization for the common weal of 
the masses, as in the formation of Masonic 
and kindred fraternities, one hundred wars 
ago, an effort marked in this age by the 
more systematic founding and instituting of 
theosophical, nationalist, socialist, and other 
co-operative societies all tending to the one 
idea of unsectarian, universal brotherhood. 
The rapid growth of this movement, the 
strong hold it has taken at once on all 
nationalities and every strata of life, betokens 



GLAD TIDINGS 9 

less a well-conceived plan of a few beneficent 
minds than a simultaneous awakening of the 
race to the realization of its divine birthright. 
The scales fall from its eyes ; the Light is 
perceived, — that Light which ever shineth 
and floods the world with its glorious baptism, 
even though the darkness comprehendeth it 
not, but suffers a crude materiality to eclipse 
those scintillations from the heart of Deity. 

The one overwhelming burden under which 
the race has staggered in its onward march 
is the universal one of physical infirmity, 
or disease in its various forms, either epi- 
demical or constitutional, a weight which it 
has hitherto carried with a pathetic patience 
and resignation worthy of a better cause. 
The display of doctors' signs in any large 
city, so frequent as to be appalling, alter- 
nating with institutions for vapor or electric 
baths, for massage or magnetic treatment, 
with drug-shops at almost every corner, is a 
startling revelation of the extent of physical 



IO A LOOK UPWARD 

suffering still rife in our midst, and the dif- 
ferent means sought and employed for its 
alleviation. 

The rich man as well as the pauper is 
the victim of bodily infirmity. He accepts 
it as a matter of course, he makes every 
concession to it, is alert with expectancy for 
its first approach, and nurses its advance 
with devoted attention and assiduity. The 
godly are no more exempt from suffering 
than the erring and vicious. The innocent 
babe is branded before its birth with this 
primeval curse ; he is mortgaged by his 
parent's fears to every form of physi 
malady which race-belief has ever sanc- 
tioned, and to the new ones which medical 
science may hereafter invent. And yet these 
sufferers are not serfs, but the children of 
a King, heirs apparent to omnipotent power. 

Year after year, the genius of man has 
been devoted to the consideration of means 
for the alleviation of disease, accepting it 



GLAD TIDINGS II 

as an inevitable reality, a Juggernaut to 
whom a certain number of victims must be 
sacrificed every year : a position no more 
intelligent than that of the benighted Hindoo 
who throws himself beneath the car-wheels 
of his advancing idol, knowing no other 
gateway to his heathen paradise. 

But to the advanced student of the present 
growthful age, there is a more excellent 
way. An ounce of prevention is worth a 
pound of cure. Disease outgrown is better 
than suffering relieved. What greater boon 
could be brought to the race than the 
abolishment of all sickness and infirmity, 
than its entrance now upon the fulfilment of 
that gladsome promise, " Neither shall there be 
any more pain " ? What achievements might 
be wrought, what problems solved, what 
poems would be sung, what artistic con- 
ceptions transferred to glowing canvas, what 
grand laws would our statesmen enact, if 
there were no aching brows or failing 



12 A LOOK UPWARD 

energies to palsy the brain and hand of 
student or dreamer, if the planet could be 
swept free of every miasma or taint of 
malaria. 

And, behold, the Emancipator comes, bear- 
ing this message of freedom to a world 
that cries out in its travail for deliverance. 
The gospel of health, of harmony, and 
perfect wholeness is proclaimed. A few 
sentinels on the watch-towers of progn 
a few listening ears have long been attuned 
to catch the first vibration of this heaven- 
born anthem, and now, its volume increasing 
as it rolls earthward, many others join in 
the refrain, each in the part alone his own, 
and pass it on, as indeed glad tidings of 
great joy which shall be to all people. 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 1 3 



CHAPTER II 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 



Progress is nature's first and greatest 
law. " Great oaks from little acorns grow " 
in every sense, unceasingly. Our country 
is still in its youth compared with the 
effete and hoary monarchies of the Old 
World, yet with what rapid strides our 
advancement is marked in art, science, 
mechanics, and inventions. Our grandsires 
read their evening chapter by the flickering, 
sputtering light of a tallow candle, whose 
feeble ray scarcely made visible the darkness 
of the rest of the apartment ; and now 
(passing over the almost outgrown luxuries 
of the fragrant oil, or gas by the cubic foot) 
we are now able to press a knob, or pull 



14 A LOOK UPWARD 

a chain, and presto! the lightning from the 
skies hastens to our behest. 

What would our respected ancestors think 
of our lung power to know we could hold 
converse with a friend twenty miles away, 
and recognize his voice ? Or to learn that 
his voice and its m could be bottled 

up in a little store-house for scores of 
and then give forth its buried treasure in 
exact detail and intonation ? 

"Old things have passed away, behold all 
things have become new:" this is the con- 
stant refrain of nature's Te Deum. Is there 
any sphere, or field of labor, that should 
be marked by exception to this law of 
advancement ? Surely not in that fountain- 
head of all discovered truth — the realm of 
the soul. We certainly would not claim 
that revelation from God is limited to any 
one age or book, that inspired teachers are 
not now sent to the world, that through 
the medium of those modern inventions — 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 1 5 

the telescope and microscope — we are not 
feeling after and finding a larger, mightier, 
more glorious God than priest or book have 
been able to portray. Each day, each hour 
is a fresh miracle from His hand, a new 
revealing, or reveiling as the word means, a 
replacing of the old veil with a thinner, 
clearer one, through which we see face to 
face. New truths are unfolded, or wait for 
our growth to apprehend them. 

In primitive days, it was necessary for the 
savage who would cross to the opposite side 
of a river to swim the current. Later, with 
clumsy device and artifice, he scoops the pith 
from a fallen tree, and fashions a rude dug- 
out in which he paddles his way to the farther 
bank, lord of two elements instead of one. 
Years pass by, and the canoe grows into a 
swan-like craft which floats as if by magic, 
without apparent effort, except that the sooty 
plume and the throb-throb of its panting heart 
tell of the potent force of invisible steam, 



l6 A LOOK UPWARD 

which the sinewy arm of the savage never 
knew. But steam is not quick enough to 
carry the important message of the nineteenth 
century, so a little wire is laid from shore to 
shore beneath the waves, and on this slender 
thread, fleet-winged Mercuries — messengers of 
the Almighty God — pass with musical, click- 
ing footsteps every hour, prophesying, as they 
speed away, that progress has not yet reached 
its limit, that a still more ethereal, invisible 
potency than the electric current will yet 
form the medium of communication between 
soul and soul. 

We recall that Galileo, in an age when 
the stability of the earth and the movement 
of the sun around it were held to be plain 
Scriptural declarations, was forced to renounce 
his correct and valuable astronomical discov- 
eries, he adding, however, in an undertone 
"The earth does move, for all that." Con- 
demned to imprisonment for the rest of his 
life, later generations do him honor, realizing 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 1 7 

that God and one always constitute a majority. 
Truth is mighty to the pulling down of all 
strongholds of error. 

As another proof of fallibility in high 
places, it is interesting to note that an 
honored university professor in Galileo's day 
refuted his discovery of the satellites of 
Jupiter by the profound conclusion that, as 
there were but seven metals, seven days 
in the week, and seven apertures in a man's 
head, there could be but seven planets, and 
when forced to admit the visibility of the 
satellites through Galileo's telescope, he rea- 
soned that, being invisible to the naked 
eye, they were useless, and consequently did 
not exist ; and this was only two hundred 
and fifty years ago. 

Not a learned doctor or renowned scholar 
in all Europe would even stoop to discuss 
Harvey's theory of the circulation of the 
blood. It was simply dismissed with ridicule. 

When the first windmill was set up in 



1 8 A LOOK UPWARD 

Scotland, and the brightest thinker in the 
crowd suggested that they make it grind 
their corn, he was hung to the nearest tree 
as a witch. Even of Christ they said, <k he- 
hath a devil," and what form of insult and 
persecution has not been heaped upon his 
devoted followers ? 

Experience is an excellent teacher. Judging 
the present or the future by the past, should 
we not be wary what new form of truth 
we hastily reject, simply because it does not 
harmonize with our former, perhaps narrow, 
convictions of truth? It becomes a pretty 
sure sign a thing is true if it is persecuted, 
and truth crushed to earth will invariably 
rise again. 

Who would willingly return to the almost 
barbarous practices of the early medical 
leeches, to the cupping, bleeding, burning, 
salivating the system with mercury, and 
similar methods employed by experimental 
materia ntedica ? What a hue and cry was 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 19 

raised against Hahnemann and his new 
theory of similia similibus curantur> and 

the infinitesimal doses of the homoeopathic 
regime, yet even this was a step in the right 
direction, toward the refining and sublimating 
of medical usages ; and physicians of the 
so-called old school use less and less medicine 
every year. Both systems, we gratefully 
remember, are represented by a noble, devoted, 
sympathetic, unwearying in well-doing class 
of gentlemen, and, in later days, of gentle- 
women. All honor to their faithful service. 
On the other hand, many excellent mechanics 
have been spoiled to swell professional ranks, 
who, lacking the gift, the intuitive power or 
insight, make through experiment, or a too 
rigid adherence to the formula of their 
school, many grievous mistakes. 

A modern form of treatment which has 
gained much popularity is known as the 
Massage, a French appellation for the time- 
honored magnetic manipulation. The Massage 



20 A LOOK UPWARD 

differs in this, however, that a natural gift, a 
spiritual power to relieve pain or remove 
disease, is not considered essential by its 
votaries, any strong person, one as well 
another, being qualified to rub, pound, pinch, 
or knead the flesh, the friction thus mechan- 
ically produced improving the circulation and 
imparting, it is supposed, a healthier tone to 
the system. This may be, doubtless is, vastly 
better than indiscriminate medication : it may 
serve as one round in the ladder of remedial 
progression ; but even here man is not recog- 
nized as anything but a body, a corporeal 
structure of bones, sinews, tissues, and ncr 
in short, as developed protoplasm. If man 
is more than this, all these methods are 
inadequate to reach his needs, as they deal 
only with effects, being powerless to enter 
the realm of causation. 

Now, are we flesh or are we spirit ? are 
we bodies or immortal souls ? God is Spirit ; 
man is made in that divine image and 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 21 

likeness, yet where are his godlike powers 
displayed, his mastery over his material 
kingdom, his freedom from the entanglements 
of matter ? Like parent, like child ; yet 
omnipotence is one of the attributes of our 
heavenly Father ; why do we not share it 
in a finite degree ? Have we not stopped 
far this side of our possibilities ? If God 
is perfect health and harmony, why do we 
not reflect His image more completely ? 
Would not a treatment of disease be best 
that could lift a patient up out of his 
bondage, that could bring him realization 
that he is a son of God, pure and absolute 
spirit, with possibilities of living, now and 
here, above the plane of disorder, holding, 
as he does, a birthright to perfect health ? 
Surely this is better than groping in the 
fog with him, recognizing his infirmities as 
realities, looking down on to material levels 
rather than upward to the realm of spirit, 
where disease and sin and death are not. 



22 A LOOK UPWARD 

Born with an innate fear and acceptance 
of all the ills of the flesh, people go out 
half-way to meet them ; they cosset and 
encourage the first symptoms of disorder, 
until by persistent watching to see how much 
worse they feel now, or how fast they are 
growing ill, aided and abetted by the tender 
solicitude of anxious friends, they coax up 
quite a respectable fit of sickness, when by 
resolutely refusing to relate themselves to 
the plane of alarming symptoms, withdrawing 
from them, filling the mind so full of thoughts 
of truth that it can have no room to hold 
impressions of pain and weakness, the body 
would soon be unable to retain its reflection 
of uncomfortable mental conditions. 

Who remembers his weakness, or disease, 
when told his house is on fire, and every 
energy must be exerted to save his property ? 
Moments of spiritual exaltation, when, like 
Paul, whether in the body or out of the 
body we cannot say, show us the possibilities 






THE LAW OF PROGRESS 23 

of daily, hourly living. But we too readily 
accept the belief that such experiences, like 
angels' visits, must be few and far between, 
and it is rendered unto us according to our 
faith. 

Yet we are spirits to-day, free, masterful 
spirits, not imprisoned in the flesh, simply 
using it as a material instrument during our 
experience on a material planet, or during 
our day-dream, for when each night comes 
we slip our anchor, or lengthen our drag- 
rope, and float away on the infinite sea of 
spirit which surrounds our little island. The 
phenomenon we call sleep, so like its twin- 
brother, Death, is nothing more than the 
withdrawal of the spirit from its clay shell 
temporarily, leaving it a senseless thing, 
while the real and eternal soul refreshes 
itself with draughts from the Living Fountain 
of Life, by intercourse with other souls, both 
disembodied now, by visits to other scenes, 
both temporal and spiritual, experiences that 



24 A LOOK UPWARD 

are superior to the mortal brain and con- 
sciousness, and are therefore not registered 
by them, are mercifully withheld from mortal 
memory, else how could we, having known 
the brightness of the real Life, endure the 
darkness of its shadowy counterpart ? We 
live double lives and know it not, but call 
the reflection the reality, giving more attention 
to the body than to its presiding genius and 
lord — the spirit. 

Look upon the body which we call dead, 
though it is always dead. Matter never has 
a particle of life, per sc. Where is the motive 
power in this forsaken body ? The muscles 
are all there, yet they do not contract to 
close the hand, the nerves of volition do 
not respond. The drum of the ear is intact ; 
sound makes no impression thereon. Pupils 
and lenses are perfect ; where has the seer 
gone? Has he lost his sight and hearing 
in the sphere beyond, missing these former 
servants ? Does the physical see or hear ? 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS 2$ 

No ; spirit is the only power. It breathed 
forth this wondrous instrument, externalized 
and vitalized its thought, and is it not a 
thing unthinkable that the creator should 
become subservient to, or be fettered by, 
its own creation, which has no intelligence 
or power ? We cannot wave our hand but 
by the command of the spirit. Then, if 
the body has no power in itself of motion, 
or of sensation, why listen to false messages 
therefrom, why bend our immortal souls 
to its seeming sway ? 

We can live, now and here, with the body 
but not of it. We bid defiance to disease, 
not in the bravado of self-will, but in the 
firm realization that we are spirits, and not 
a handful of dust, blown hither and thither 
by the breath of contagion or fear. If 
this sounds absurd to the ordinary reader, 
let him remember that every tree must be 
judged by its fruits. If there are a class of 
people in our community to-day, who are 



26 A LOOK UPWARD 

not only uproariously well, often raised to 
this glorious state from one of chronic 
invalidism, but who know how to keep well, 
who are permanently exempt from prostration 
by illness, how shall we explain it? Must 
we not admit the reality and worth of a 
science which stands such test, the discovery 
of a pearl of great price which all sufferers 
should strive to obtain? 

As we become enlightened spiritually, we 
reject instinctively g material methods 

of treatment that cannot touch the spirit. 
Realizing that we are the sons of God, we 
draw our strength and health from whence 
cometh our life — the spiritual centre — and 
not from drugs, wet sheets, or a manipulation 
that fastens the thought in the body. How 
crude these methods seem to the awakened 
mind! How soon we shall outgrow them as 
we realize our own latent, inherent powers, 
become conscious that the kingdom of heaven 
and of health is within us, that God lives in 






THE LAW OF PROGRESS 2J 

us as well as we in Him, our life hid, like 
Paul's, with Christ in God! And how can 
a part of God be sick? Emerson says, " There 
is no bar or wall where man the effect ceases 
and God the cause begins." It is an inter- 
blent ion. We are just discovering that we 
are not serfs, but gods, and as the demonstra- 
tion of this old-new truth is to-day in its 
infancy, what advance, what spiritual triumphs, 
may we not expect and hope for when it is 
more thoroughly understood, more* widely 
accepted, and certain crudities are outgrown ? 
That many illogical points are taken, and 
absurd statements made by its disciples of 
varying schools, we readily admit, but all, 
we trust, are faithfully endeavoring to live up 
to the light they have received, while desiring 
more. A pint cup cannot hold a quart, but 
its own capacity is a necessary and a useful 
one. 

The metaphysician is not working to super- 
sede other modes of practice, or to send all 



28 A LOOK UPWARD 

apothecaries into bankruptcy. He is trying 
to speed the day when his own occupation 
will likewise be gone, when the healer will 
no longer be needed in the land, because its 
inhabitant shall no more say, "I am sick." 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 29 



CHAPTER III 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 



There is, perhaps, no theme so much 
discussed at the present day, so little under- 
stood, and therefore so frequently dismissed 
with scorn and ridicule, as this one subject of 
mental or spiritual healing, under its various 
names of mind-cure, Christian, mental, and 
spiritual science, or metaphysical healing, each 
parts of one great whole, separate flakes from 
the shining crystal of divine Truth, which all 
are alike striving to grasp and hold in their puny 
embrace. But the revelation is far too grand 
and deep to be received by one mind or circle 
of intelligence aolne ; it is too pure and 
unselfish to encourage clanship, or to be 
represented by cliques and classes. 



30 A LOOK UPWARD 

Glintings of this dawning light have come 
to several minds in modern times, to such as 
have been sufficiently unfolded to receive it. 
Dr. P. P. Ouimby of Maine was one of the 
earliest exponents of the theory that man's 
body is the externalization of his thought 
alone, and that health is the eternal fact, lie 
was indeed a veritable father of the movement 
and held far more of the truth than at that 
early date he was perhaps able to practicalize, 
not having worked out his problem completely, 
and therefore did not cut entirely adrift from 
material remedies or manipulation. 

Dr. YY. F. Evans, of sainted memory, v, 
another most worthy John the Baptist of this 
new outpouring of the Spirit, and his exten- 
sive works, especially the fruit of his riper 
years, have been perhaps more extensively read 
than those of any other metaphysical writer. 
One sentence from his inspired pen often 
redeems the day from doubt and depression, 
while quickening the student's trust in the 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 3 1 

omnipotence of Good, and nourishing his 
highest spiritual growth. 

Mrs. Mary B. G. Eddy, the author of 
" Science and Health," claims to be the 
"Discoverer" and sole custodian, or only 
true interpreter, of Christian Science. She 
was undoubtedly chosen as an instrument for 
the practicalization of metaphysical truth, she 
first presented it in tabulated form to the 
world, sounded the tocsin of awakening with 
more energy than did her modest predecessors, 
she has waged valiant warfare against the mate- 
rialism of the age, a service which challenges 
the gratitude of all truth-seekers and laborers 
in the cause of human advancement. " Give 
her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own 
works praise her in the gates." 

But her claim to originality, the undue 
prominence given to personality above the 
principle which it was alone her duty to 
transmit, is unfortunate, since her first form- 
ula, " All is mind, there is no matter," is iden- 



32 A LOOK UPWARD 

tical with pure Brahmanism, the oldest philoso- 
phy of the Orient, which recognized spirit as 
the incorporeal Brahm, the only reality, and 
matter as Maya, or illusion. But her system 
refuses to recognize that there has ever been 
any expression of the Divine Creative Thought. 
The outermost reflection of the spirit, — matter, 
— by means of which conscious individualized 
mind is alone attainable, Christian Science 
ignores, even as a servant, a thing controlled. 
The whole panorama of beauty in the natural 
world is a mere phantasmagoria, a creation of 
the mortal mind ; and this untenable position, 
like similar purely abstract conclusions, inevi- 
tably develops a spirit of exclusiveness, self- 
righteousness, and caste in its promulgate 
besides being ill adapted to the every-day use 
of the practical American. Conversion to 
Brahmanism is neither possible nor desirable 
for this age and nation. Abstract metaphysi- 
cal dogmas are no better than abstract theologi- 
cal creeds. This valuable truth should not be 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 33 

held too far above the hearts of the people. 
Mental acceptance alone seldom thrills the 
affections to express themselves in deeds of 
charity or unselfishness. 

This statement is not made in a spirit of 
unkind criticism, of forgetfulness of the noble 
work this school has wrought and will continue 
to exert, but simply to make clear our own 
conscientious position. 

The outlook of Christian Science into the 
eternity of the past or the immortality of the 
future is strangely limited. It places in our 
hands no key to the problem of life. Its con- 
solation to the mourner and the bereaved is 
indeed meagre. It claims there is no body, and 
yet dropping this nonentity is equivalent to 
annihilation as far as the possibility of contin- 
ued intercourse between mind and mind is 
concerned. Its philosophy stops short at the 
borders of the so-called grave, and commands 
no outlook into the life which is all spirit, it 
recognizes no divine purpose to be wrought out 



34 A LOOK UPWARD 

in our present incarnation, which is only named 
a belief, a mortal dream, of no purport or 
value. 

This position (which Mrs. Eddy for some 
good reason doubtless was led to take) lias 
unfortunately alienated the large army of 
spiritual thinkers and workers known as 
Spiritualists, and prevented their acceptance of 
this gospel of health, which they so greatly 
need. But is there not a weak place also in 
their armor? \Yc grant them the cardinal 
point of their position, that of communion 
between spirit and spirit under any circum- 
stances, bond or free; for how can we do other- 
wise if we accept Mrs. Eddy's tenet : "There 
is no death"? But are not Spiritualist- 
little too prone to magnify the power of the 
spirit unclothed with clay, and far too remiss 
in their diligent culture of the spirit within ? 
Their own innate, divine powers are held in 
abeyance, while they give unquestioned reli- 
ance, a too implicit obedience, to the prompt- 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 35 

ings of their revered guardians or guides. 
What gives these spirits their power ? Is 
there any source from whence they can derive 
it but the same Source accessible to us — the 
power of the Infinite ? We are spirits also, 
and this incarnation is the opportunity afforded 
each embodied soul to develop the possibility 
of becoming guide and helper to some weaker 
brother or sister. We shall gain no spiritual 
growth by the mere process of being unclothed 
with mortality. Those Spiritualists who 

receive unquestioned the ipse dixit of a risen 
spirit as the embodiment of divine wisdom, 
and obey its message as they would a mandate 
from Deity, should remember that the only 
change in so-called dying is merely an exchange 
of dress. Spiritual media, though honest and 
sincere, often bear in their physical nature 
the painful reflection of this mental bondage. 
All life, all intelligence, all power are one in 
spiritual or mortal expressions of life. The 
germ of the divine dwells in every spirit, the 



36 A LOOK UPWARD 

possibility of all wisdom and purity. Let us, 
then, listen to the voice of God within, rather 
than to the spirits without. Let us strive for 
the highest possible development of our own 
spiritual realization, by recognizing our inti- 
mate relation with the one great, omniscient, 
omnipotent Spirit, the Father of us all. 

Theosophists, on the other hand, do not 
usually admit the possibility of communion 
with anything more than the shades or shells 
of the departed, with the reliquaries of the 
lower principles, which retain a fleeting, transi- 
tory memory of past intelligence and events, 
the higher soul meanwhile enjoying a blissful 
dream, one a little less illusive than that of 
our mortal existence, in Devachan, where it 
remains in ignorance of the trials and sorrows 
of mortal experience, lest its (seemingly 
selfish) happiness should be otherwise impaired. 
Theosophists justly claim that the promiscuous 
development of phenomenal mediumship is to 
be deplored, and they earnestly appeal instead 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 37 

to every imprisoned soul to come forth from its 
bondage to lower appetites and proclivities, 
and to cultivate the higher consciousness of 
indwelling Divinity. The grand philosophy, 
the satisfactory answer to the difficult enigmas 
of life which Theosophy unrolls before us, is 
of the highest value, and its endeavor to 
advance the universal brotherhood of mankind 
commands our deepest respect and assistance. 

Spiritual Science is really Theosophy dem- 
onstrated and applied ; it is the practicalization 
of at-one-ment with the Divine. Theosophists, 
to whom the subject has perhaps been unfor- 
tunately presented, are a little fearful that 
metaphysicians are interfering with people's 
Karma (though why metaphysicians more than 
physicians, to whom Theosophists, on occasion, 
so readily apply ?) ; they think that the retribu- 
tion of past acts and thoughts should work 
itself out unrestrictedly, that these healers can 
cure none but those whose bad Karma is now 
exhausted. But is it not a little singular that 



38 A LOOK UPWARD 

this metaphysical awakening should mark the 
period of so many instantaneous Karmic 
explosions ? Would not a little more light on 
the subject of explosive Karma be in order? 
Is illness always a Karmic result ? Does it 
not frequently occur from ignorance, from 
the fact that the letters of the alphabet of 
health have never been learned ? True, it 
might be argued that a better Karmic record 
would long ago have brought within the suf- 
ferer's grasp opportunities for such enlighten- 
ment, but is not such deficiency often attrib- 
utable to national, or race Karma? And 
is retribution necessarily met on the plane 
of physical expression ? At least, we n 
not continue to suffer from wrong thought, 
when it is possible, from this moment, to begin 
right thinking and right living, to commence 
the manufacture of good Karma. And if we 
emancipate our own lives from present and 
future illness, do we not thereby lift the race 
one little step above its present level ? God 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 39 

speed and hasten the growth of such enlighten- 
ment throughout the world, until all shall 
know the truth, from the least even unto the 
greatest — the truth that maketh free. 

It is doubtful if this new Christ-child has 
been properly christened as yet. " Mind-cure " 
seems to imply the use of mesmerism, the 
domination of an unsound mind by a healthy 
one, which forms no part of true healing. 
Mental science literally signifies intellectual 
culture, or a study of the laws of psychology, 
psychometry, and other mental phenomena. 

The term Spiritual Science is one more uni- 
versal and inclusive than that of Christian 
Science, and was first used by Mr. W. J. 
Colville, whose demonstration of spiritual truth 
is always so clear, reasonable, and convincing. 
More than many teachers he ever seeks to 
cultivate in his pupils their own intuitional 
powers, which will enable them to perceive the 
truth for themselves, instead of accepting his 
opinion as authoritative. There is no reason 



40 A LOOK UPWARD 

why conviction of truth or a fresh revelation 
should not come to each and every soul. A 
belief in infallibility, a blind adherence to the 
tenets of any teacher, is fatal to growth or to 
individual illumination. 

Sect division has been the bane of every 
advanced movement or religion the world has 
ever known. While thought is free and inde- 
pendent, and types of mind are so distinct, 
differences of opinion will doubtless be main- 
tained, but all diverse mental positions should 
be welded in the fervor of one combined 
loving effort for the good of humanity. Let 
all spiritual workers of every shade of belief 
join hands, close their ranks and stand firmly, 
shoulder to shoulder, in valiant service for the 
cause of human liberty. And let their war-cry 
be a glad Jubilate, with no accompanying 
undertone of Miserere. A sad-faced religion 
has fettered the world far too long and proved 
itself incapable of bringing a perfect salvation 
to the race. The light of Truth has riven 



DIVERSE RECEPTIVITY 41 

asunder the theological cloud which hitherto 
has hung low and threatening above the hearts 
of men ; that golden rift can never again be 
closed. Then sing unto the Lord a new song ! 
Let the mountains be glad ! Let the floods 
clap their hands, and the hills be joyful 
together, for the winter is over and gone ; the 
time for the singing of birds has come, and 
the voice of the summer is heard in our land ! 



42 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER IV 

GOD AND THE SOUL 

In commencing the study of Spiritual 
Science, all former ideas and methods of study, 
as pursued in ordinary academical branches 
of acquired knowledge, are revolutionized. Its 
methods are not those of the schools. Tli 
are no text-books to be memorized, no regula- 
tion questions to which stereotyped answers 
are given. We approach an altar, the shrine 
of a great Truth, and not a bench or reading- 
desk. Other studies have led our thoughts 
outward on to the external, objective plane. 
Those noble sciences — astronomy and botany 
— while kindling in the heart the deepest 
reverence for the marvellous creative thought 
of Deity, still teach us object lessons ; the 



GOD AND THE SOUL 43 

soul still looks outward. But our study in the 
line of the Athenian precept, " Man, know thy- 
self," reverses thought and vision. We use 
other eyes and other faculties ; forgetting the 
external plane, we enter upon a voyage of 
discovery greater than that of Columbus, for 
it is a new world which opens before us, where- 
of we are monarchs, restored to our rightful 
kingdom, possessing powers and prerogatives 
of which we have not hitherto dreamed. 

There are two forms of vegetable growth, 
the exogenous and endogenous. The exogens 
increase by the addition of layer upon layer 
from the outside, like the circles of bark in 
a tree. The endogens expand from within 
outward. The central germ swells and bursts 
its bonds in its struggle for expression. Here 
we have the law of correspondence to our own 
intellectual and spiritual growth. Schools, 
academies, and universities pack on externally 
accumulated layers of facts. Spiritual Science, 
which is true knowledge, and a knowledge of 



44 A LOOK UPWARD 

Truth, quickens the divine germ within, which 
may have lain latent long, thrills it into 
expression, and nourishes its highest growth 
and development. 

First, as most essential, what is our concep- 
tion of Deity — this Something which is every- 
where — for we can conceive of the Infinite, 
the Absolute, if we cannot in a finite existence 
attain to full comprehension of Deity. Have 
we ever formulated such conception in our own 
mind ? Have we thought out this greatest of 
all problems as the basic principle of our 
growth, or have we been content to allow our 
pastors and teachers to do our thinking for us, 
receiving unquestioned their testimony ? Men 
have conceived of God as a giant man, an 
enlarged and glorified copy of themselves, with 
hands and feet, and organs for seeing and hear- 
ing, with also many of their foibles, their 
proneness to anger, jealousy, and revenge, one 
who rules the world like a capricious potentate. 
Why should the author of all forms assume 



GOD AND THE SOUL 45 

one more than another, even though the human 
form divine is the highest expression we have 
yet reached ? We recall that the Holy Spirit 
assumed the form of a dove when it descended 
upon the beloved Son. The materiality of 
human thought interprets materially the words 
"made in His image and likeness." The 
unreal — the body — alone obtains recognition 
from the natural man, but man is a spirit and 
not a body. He has doubtless worn other 
forms prior to this existence. He may wear 
still another, farther on ; so we should have a 
changeable God, if we were made in the image 
and likeness of His form. 

Can the one all-pervading Life-Principle, or 
Essence, in its myriad manifestations, be com- 
passed by the possibilities of a single Being, 
or of a Godhead subdivided into three person- 
alities ? Everywhere, in everything, we see 
our God. What is space? The "everlasting 
arms " around and underneath, enfolding all. 
What is light ? The rays that stream from 



46 A LOOK UPWARD 

the Central Glory, for since God is, light must 
be. Color? It is the warmth of this illumined 
Breath. And music? The melodious throb- 
bing of the Infinite Heart which sets the 
keynote of all that lives to perfect harmony. 
Such a form as this, our God may wear. 

Descriptions of that magnificent tomb of 
the Shah Jchan, near Agra — the Taj Mahal — 
include among other marvellous features of 
beauty, particular mention of its dome, in 
which is the most perfect whisperii lerv 

in the world. Through the multitude of an 
and corridors the echo and swell and fall 

again in sweetest music; and of this echo one 
has said: "We cannot tell where it is, for it 
is nowhere ; we cannot tell where it is not. 
it is everywhere." Similarly does this Divine 
Echo swell through the corridors of our s< 
but how rare is its response clear and true, 
how imperfectly is its Source recognized 
How frequently is its matchless harmony 
blurred by discordant tones, how seldom does 



GOD AND THE SOUL 47 

the Voice of Perfect Love elicit the same 
intonation. 

It is a little singular that the volume uni- 
versally conceded by the Christian world to be 
par excellence the revelation of God — our Holy 
Bible — reveals so little of the nature of Deity, 
differing in this from the Sanscrit Scriptures, 
which teach the absolute identity of the self 
and the Supreme Self, and that the Spirit is 
the self in all creatures, as declared in Christ's 
M I and my Father are one." 

In the Bhagavad Gita (comprising some 770 
verses), the principal topic is the nature of 
God, while scarcely that amount of space is 
devoted to the consideration of the Deity in 
our whole Bible. In that poetic imagery and 
wealth of expression which characterizes the 
Eastern tongue, the Attributeless One (because 
all attributes have their source in Him) de- 
clares "for the benefit of those whose minds 
still wander out through the rates of sense:" 
11 Know me, O son of Bharata, as the eternal 



48 A LOOK UPWARD 

seed of all creatures. I am the unborn, the 
beginningless, the exhaustless in essence, the 
all-pervading, the unthinkable, the incapable of 
being pointed out. I am the splendor of sun 
and moon. I am the taste in water, the 
brilliance in the fire, the smell in the earth ; 
I am the wisdom of the wise, and the power 
of the powerful. I am the goodness in the 
good, the silence of the secret. Of the strong 
I am that strength ' thai] we not add, of 
the well he is the health?). "At the end 
of many births the wise man finds me as the 
Vasudeva, who is all this. I am the father 
of this universe, the mother, the all-faced 
regulator. / am the goal, the nourisher, the 
place of dwelling, the refuge, the source and 
the end, also the latent cause and the mani- 
fested effect." " Owing to me all tilings 
work* 1 " There is no end to the variety of 
my manifested forms. I am the Ego seated 
in the hearts of all creatures. I am the sun 
possessed of rays." 



GOD AND THE SOUL 49 

And what demand does this pure Scripture 
make upon the life of the disciple ? Hear it. 
" Hating no creature, full of brotherly love, 
and compassionate, devoid of ///j'-ness, devoid 
of egotism, forgiving, ever content, of tranquil 
heart, with nature subjugated, firm in intent, 
and with thought and faith given up to me ; 
whoso is my devotee is dear unto me ; unex- 
pecting, pure, devoid of fear. Equal towards 
friend and enemy, and also towards honor and 
disgrace, equal towards heat and cold " (this 
is practical metaphysics), "towards enjoyment 
and suffering, equal to whom are abuse and 
adulation, content with any and every thing, 
firm in heart, possessed of devotion ; such a 
man is beloved of me." 

Is the picture discouraging ? Remember 
"thine is the right to action, not thine is the 
right to the result." A plant is not conscious 
of growth when aspiring upward. Often it 
doth not yet appear what it shall be, what 
color of blossom or quality of fruitage it 



5<D A LOOK UPWARD 

shall bear. Yet long ago, before it was 
planted, the seed decided its fruition. He 
who is " the eternal seed of all creatures " 
hath planted a germ which cannot fail to reach 
perfection. Discouragement comes alone from 
the "my-ness," which also must be outgrown, 
our seif-ness, the sense of separateness from 
God, of relying on our own resources, as if 
we had any "own" apart from Him, as if we 
were not lived out by the all-pervading 
Essence. Could the plant grow, or retain 
existence, if cut off from the rays of the 
life-giving sun ? 

In the ancient Persian religion, Zon 
their Enlightencr, gave to his disciples our 
sun as an emblem of Deity, as the eye of 
Ormuzd, the primeval Light. Multitudes 
his followers doubtless forgot the emblem in 
the idol and became Guebres, or fire- 
worshippers, but the revelation as originally 
given was pure in its conception of the one 
Central Glory, birthless, unchanging, an omni- 



GOD AND THE SOUL 5 I 

present vital Essence, or Spirit, a deathless 
Flame, whose sparks we are, that eternal Sun 
being the First Great Cause of all suns and 
worlds and souls. 

Now, it is the law of the sun to scatter its 
beams ; it shines because it must. Deity 
must express itself, must manifest its over- 
flowing, creative energy, and as we read in 
the Mosaic parable : " In the beginning God 
created the heavens and the earth, and God 
made man in His image, male and female!' 
The Lord, our God, is one God, one Life, 
but dual in the manifestation of that Life. 
In the source of all expression must be 
included all possibilities of expression. Sex 
has its origin in this duality of the Deific 
reflection. In nature and every form of 
organic life is the dual expression manifest. 
Then reasoning back from matter to spirit, 
from the lowest to the highest, judging the 
substance by the shadow, the creator from 
the creation, we know that our one God, the 



52 A LOOK UPWARD 

Infinite Entity, manifests Himself (and Herself) 
dually as Love and Wisdom, as Life and Sub- 
stance. And since God is, the soul — His 
breath — must be. 

Now the soul also, as a ray from the Central 
Glory, being a part of God, of Him and in 
Him, sharing all I lis attributes in a finite 
degree, must express //self. It is the privil 
of the soul to radiate the light it receives 
from its Sourer. It moves towards expression, 
as God does. It breathes forth a lower reflec- 
tion, or an imperfect consciousness of its 
Divine Self, which manifests at first through 
the crudest form, then, after learning its one 
brief lesson in nature's school, mastering the 
first few letters of evolution's alphabet, it 
returns to the divine soul that gave it birth, 
and eventually a higher propulsion from the 
same parent-soul is incarnated in material 
form, a very small portion of the soul-entity 
gaining expression at any one time. We are 
never, when embodied, all that we are in soul, 






GOD AND THE SOUL 53 

but it is this soul-force permeating our mortal 
nature which is our reservoir of power; the 
divine Ego illuminates the human clay. It 
gives us the voice of intuition, the reminis- 
cence of our divine estate, reveals our 
inheritance to perfectness of health, strength, 
and freedom from all physical bondage, for 
we can keep our communication so close with 
the Over-Soul, can run back on that glittering 
line of light so far into the Central Heart 
as to drink in and absorb light, heat (or love), 
wisdom, and power for every need. 

So we in turn become luminous centres 
and scatter our beams, or spiritual expression 
of the one Life, although that reflection is 
dimmed by the mask we wear, which is our 
lower personality, the word person being 
appropriately derived from the Latin word, 
persona, a mask ; but the actor is never 
adequately represented by the character he 
assumes. We must learn to distinguish 
between the appearance and the reality. 



54 A LOOK UPWARD 

We hold our destinies and every condition 
of life in our own hands, while we strive 
towards our ideal, the conscious at-one-ment 
of the soul with Divinity. 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 55 



CHAPTER V 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 



In the Biblical account of creation, as a link 
between chaos and cosmos, after Jehovah, are 
mentioned the Eloihim, sons of God, and 
archangelic architects of the planet. This first 
step toward the differentiation of the Absolute, 
toward the personal expression of the universal 
Life-Principle, the first inscription on Involu- 
tion's downward rolling scroll, supplies the 
need of personality to which some students 
cling while learning their alphabet of spiritual 
truth. These parental souls have doubtless 
ripened on some former planet from whose 
dissipated elements our own earth is perhaps 
a recombination. It is now their privilege and 
office to assist us in weaving the same endur- 



56 A LOOK UPWARD 

ing chain. Such as they, we shall become 
when we have ascended all the cyclic rounds 
of creation's winding stair. Only thus can we 
arrive at the consciousness of the Ego, only 
through contact with matter can we unfold the 
thinking principle whose potent germ we 
inherit from the Infinite. Through a continu- 
ous evolution do we discover and understand 
involution ; from the primer of results do we 
pierce the realm of causation. Therefore 
theatres of action are established, workshops 
for the apprenticeship of souls, schools of 
discipline and unfoldment, even material 
worlds, and such will continue to exist as long 
as any souls need this beneficent provision 
for their education and experience. 

The materialist recognizes but two fon 
in the universe, matter and energy, from which 
he claims conscious mind, in some unexplained, 
unscientific manner, to be evolved. lie accepts 
nothing which he cannot see, touch, or weigh 
with his gross physical senses. His intuitive 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 57 

sense — the sight of the soul — is as yet 
unborn. The spiritual thinker, with a broader 
range of vision, recognizes the seeming trinity 
of expression — intelligence, force, and form — 
as differing degrees of manifestation of the 
one Life-Principle. The creative Mind thinks, 
therefore we are. Secondarily, the God in us, 
"the Father in secret," expresses itself. The 
Absolute and Infinite becomes in us differen- 
tiated and finite. " God is a Spirit/' Spirit 
is therefore the only Divine Reality, the one 
unalterable Substance, the Alpha and Omega 
of Being. 

We must predicate spirit as we do a First 
Great Cause. Spirit is the only life, the only 
intelligence, but mind is never expressed except 
through the medium of form. Material form 
of some kind, either solid, liquid, gaseous, or of 
a nature too attenuated for our present plane 
of consciousness to conceive, is necessary. 
The spirit therefore breathes out its instru- 
ment of expression, its tool, or servant of 



5 8 A LOOK UPWARD 

growth ; its thought externalizes a shape which 
becomes more crude and dense as it ming 
with the lower strata of earth's atmosphere, 
but is still a counterpart of its more permanent 
spiritual envelope. 

Matter is therefore spirit solidified, tempo- 
rarily, and thought is the connecting energy, 
constituting thus a trinity of expression. 
There is no matter as a separate entity, but 
the luminous spirit easts its shadow, which 
exists on this mortal plane of consciousness, 
but has no separate or permanent being. Of 
this material reflection, thought is always the 
shaping power. Thoughts indeed are thinj 
as all things are only the materialization 
thought. Thoughts are potent energies, the 
levers of omnipotence, the messengers of the 
Higher Self, the indwelling Atma. 

The Darwinian theory of evolution and the 
physical origin of man is undoubtedly true. 
The soul tries her apprentice hand on many 
forms besides that of the ape, before external- 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 59 

izing, in its beauty, the human form. She 
must learn all possibilities of expression, must 
sound every note in the creative scale, com- 
mencing in the lowest octave. Man is an 
epitome of the universe ; he includes all that 
is below him. Darwin erred alone in this. He 
read the reverse side of the picture, the copy 
instead of the original negative. He missed 
the primal truth of involution, the rolling 
downward of the quickening breath of Deity, 
before its externalization in form. Everything 
must be subjective in the spiritual world, 
before it can become objective in the material. 
On the other hand physical experience of 
every kind is necessary to perfect the arch- 
angelic world-builder, to awaken the knowledge 
that we are the sons of God, and one with our 
divine, creative Source. 

The passage of this quivering breath, this 
soul-thought, with its wonderful tenacious 
vitality, to its farthest ultimatum, and its slow 
passage backward and upward through the 



60 A LOOK UPWARD 

lowest manifestations of intelligence, known as 
the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, 
it might be profitless to discuss, although it is 
most interesting to note the fineness of the 
border lines on which their demarcations hi] 

Who can always decide which is lichen and 
which is rock ? Certain of the seaweeds were 
once classed with animalcule, and no one then 
questioned the intelligent behavior of these 
minute forms of life. The sea-anemone, 
chained to its rock, by a flowerlike bud pro- 
duces another zoophyte, multiplying much as 
does the potato, one eye being sufficient to 
produce a separate specimen of either organic 
or inorganic life. Plants require hours of rest, 
can be tortured to death by being kept awake ; 
they are sensitive as humans to blessed 
baneful touch. Variety is to them also the 
spice of life. Wheat grown from seed raised 
on the same field refuses to bear. Darwin 
thought he detected symptoms of dream-life 
in the sensitive plant, which often arouses at 






SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 6l 

night from its deep slumber with a start, as 
if troubled by disturbing experiences. Flowers 
are most ingenious in attracting to themselves 
those insects who will assist in their fertiliza- 
tion ; they tempt the birds of the air to carry 
their seeds far away from the parent root, while 
they protect themselves by thorn and brier 
and beard from the devouring caterpillar. 
They have strong desires to found a family, 
and no life-insurance agent could provide 
larger legacy for the nutriment of the next 
generation. Some plants love society, growing 
in social groups ; others prefer solitude. 

How strongly human types are here fore- 
shadowed. There is hardly a virtue or a vice 
which has not its counterpart in the vegetable 
kingdom. There are vegetable thieves and 
murderers ; parasites, who suck the life-blood 
of their fellows on whom they fasten their 
fangs ; garroters, who twine themselves around 
their victim until he strangles and dies ; and 
there are also floral assassins, those carnivorous 



62 A LOOK UPWARD 

plants that, growing in marshy places where 
they can absorb no nitrogen or mineral salts, 
supply this lack by the digestion and assimila- 
tion of organic matter, cunningly laying a trap 
with an attractive sweet secretion, and literally 
decomposing their prey by a fluid similar to 
pepsin. Bits of beef or boiled are 

digested as well as flies, while no notice is 
taken of -rains of sand, or other inorganic 
matter. One plant, observed by the late Pro- 
fessor Gray, devoured two flies in one morning, 
and died of overeating in attempting to di| 
a third, only to be born again possibly, later 
on, in the form of gourmand or epicure. 

Who can draw the line between \ ible 

and animal life? To which belongs the 
sponge, or the coral, that minute expression 
of life which becomes one of the creative 
agencies of the world, and helps to build a 
continent ? Is the power of locomotion a test ? 
We have rhizomas, or walking-roots, and 
lichens that creep with noiseless tread. 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 63 

It is only through this gradual evolutionary 
expression in matter, and not until after slow 
passage and repeated struggles in various 
changing forms, through a period of time 
unimaginable by us, that the seal of conscious 
intelligence, the recognition of its divine 
Source, is impressed upon the human mind. 
But the soul-germ is always spirit and not its 
externalized expression. It does not die with 
change of form. Spirit is genesis as well as 
revelation. There is no death, but change is 
the necessary condition of our growth. Does 
the green orange die when it dons the rich 
golden dress of the ripened fruit ? Does it 
not like a magnet attract from the elements 
that which assists in the formation of its new 
dress, its higher phase of growth ? 

Exactly so this breath of God, which we 
are, attracts to it elements of which it builds 
its forms, its tools of manifestation, changing 
them naturally as the refining, educational 
process goes on, changing them many times 



64 A LOOK UPWARD 

after the so-called animal kingdom is outgrown. 
Have we never noticed the types of fox, of 
parrot, of the reptile that crawls and the 
beast that wears bristles, of the patient pack- 
horse and the industrious ant, still clinging to 
the higher form of life which we call human ? 
These also must be outgrown, before the divine 
image and likeness can be clearly reflected. 

It is only the unthinking mind that rejects 
the truth of re-embodiment, one that has never 
given the subject careful attention, or the soul 
that has not yet been " born again " sufficiently 
to recognize itself, to remember its path ; one 
whose range of vision is so narrow, or its ideas 
of and aspirations for growth so easily satisfied, 
that a short existence of seventy, eighty, 
ninety years, at most, seems sufficient to solve 
this difficult problem which we call Life, and 
to outgrow every lower propensity. 

Scriptural proof of re-embodiment is not 
lacking, a doctrine never refuted by the Master, 
though frequently discussed in his presence ; in 



SPIRIT VERSUS MATTER 6$ 

fact he endorses the identity of John the 
Baptist with the spirit of Elias, or Elijah. 
4 ' The sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
children," but we are our own ancestors, and 
the children of our former selves, and this 
visited sin is the fulfilment of the law that 
u every man shall bear his own burden.'' 
Ezekiel declares that "the son shall not bear 
the iniquity of the father," but to those sons, 
or souls, who do not make a proper use in one 
embodiment of its rich opportunities will come 
another existence more meagre and barren, one 
burdened with poverty of resources and means 
of advancement, until through hardship and 
struggle these souls will outgrow selfishness, and 
learn the blessedness of ministration, will be 
" perfected through suffering." 

This law of a plurality of existences is the 
key to many of life's mysteries. What other 
satisfactory explanation can be given, consist- 
ent with a God of Justice, for the diversity 
found in the human family, all children of one 



66 A LOOK UPWARD 

Father ? If all souls are created equal, why 
this seeming favoritism, these unequally dis- 
tributed blessings, favorable and ided 
conditions of mortal birth, diversity in growth, 
knowledge, virtue, in gifts and in opportunity 
for their expression, unless all opportunities 
come to every soul in time ? On 
scholars once occupied the dullan it ; the 
saint once ' I where the sinner now Stand 

Our present existence holds the position of 
a ship on the pathless (I Stant horizon 

(the kiss of the sky on the curved cheek 
the planet) the only limit to our an 

eternity reaching both v. nd only on the 

clouds that hang above our course can we 
faintly trace the mil >f that fair city of the 

King, the goal to which that magnet of the 
soul lures us on. For like jets of water from 
a fountain that seek their level only to 
and fall again from the reservoir that gave 
them birth, so from the Deific Fountain of all 
Life souls leap forth to sparkle awhile in the 



SFIRIT VERSUS MATTER 






sunshine, or happily minister to the thi: 
need of some toilworn wayfarer, and then 
are absorbed in the prolific Mighty Source, 
until they spring* forth ; from a higher 
altitude, to which through past experience they 
haw ] vn. 

Then how necessary, how merciful is the 
change we call death. Death is the great 
emancipator. Should we wish to wear a coat 
we had outgrown ? The form accreted by our 
spiritual condition of years agone does us now 
injustice, can serve us no longer. How gladly 
we lay it aside to enjoy our long vacation in 
the Summer Land, reaping the fruition of our 
labors, gathering the fruit from seed we have 
:i, before the next term opens in a higher 

life-school, it mav be on another less material 

j 

planet, and on still another and another, in our 
ascending series, till — oh, joy unspeakable — 
through a growth of which our present state 
cannot conceive, we may become angelic lues- 
's of the Father, ay, mo: the Christ 
to some fallen souls on lower worlds. 



68 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER VI 

GOOD AND EVIL 

Perhaps the chief hindrance to general 
acceptance of metaphysical truth is the 

extremely radical position taken by some of 
its exponents, as, for example, the statement 
" there is no sin," when crime stalks red- 
handed through our city streets; "there is 

no sickness," w'uni the healer's own occupa- 
tion proclaims the great necessity of his 
mission; "there is no matter," when the 
Infinite Wisdom and Love, the majesty, 
sublimity, and tenderness of the Deific Mind, 
are all expressed in and through the natural 
world, when 44 the heavens declare the glory 
of God and the firmament showeth His 
handiwork;" or, the statement that "matter 



GOOD AND EVIL 69 

is an error," whereupon the logical thinker 
naturally inquires : " What properties has 
negation, or how can nothing be an error?" 
Our materiality of thought and conception 
is always erroneous, our delegating to matter 
powers of its own, our regarding the body as 
a reality which sets up business on its own 
account, and assumes potent conditions which 
hold our immortal soul in bondage : this has 
been the cause of untold suffering for cen- 
turies. On the plane of pure unexpressed 
spirit, matter and its conditions do not exist, 
but to gain the full, rounded development and 
unfoldment of the Ego, this transitory, eva- 
nescent illusive matter is a valuable servant. 
Even the Christs are dependent upon it for 
the performance of their divine mission, to 
reveal by example the true life of the spirit, 
the only life there is. The world's error con- 
sists in not placing matter beneath its feet. 
The free-born spirit shares its throne with a 
slave, blind to the fact of their mutual 



JO A LOOK UPWARD 

relationship,, or of the soul's own innate 
supremacy. 

Like the pair in the primeval garden, the 
spirit-breath which the soul sends forth 
wanders out after its "fall," or descent into 
matter, being free to choose the good or the 
evil, the true or the false, the substance or 
its semblance. If untrue to its original type, 
its higher self, if it s the language of 

its childhood, and degenerates into externals, 
choosing sensuous pleasures whose fruits are 
bitter, it may b'' led about through many 
painful experien US were the children of 

reaching the promised land, it may 

descend to the level of the swine and fi 
upon husks, as did the Prodigal Son, before 
making the wise r t<> arise and return 

unto the Father. It finds no evil that it does 
not manufacture, none that is not the result 
of its own blindness. 

Evil is the limitation of Good, as matter is 
the limitation of spirit. It is an inevitable 



GOOD AND EVIL 7 1 

condition of growth, a lower round in the 
ladder that slopes Godward. Early lessons 
are always imperfectly learned. The one all- 
pervading power in the universe is the omnip- 
otent Good. This statement admits of no 
argument, being a self-evident axiom. Our 
solar centre is the one source of light and 
heat to its planetary kingdom ; light is its 
universal law ; still it is possible for some 
opaque object like the moon, though dead and 
lifeless in itself, to come between that brilliant 
luminary and its earth-child, eclipsing those 
radiant beams. The sun continues to shine 
just as brightly, its light is diffused as widely 
during the earth's obscuration as before. 
Exactly so the omnipresent Good always 
reigns. There is no life or potency in the 
shadow which the heart of man allows to fall 
like a pall between him and goodness. It is 
only the shadow of his own lower self standing 
with its back to the Light. 

But the supremacy of Good is shown in this 



7 '2 A LOOK UPWARD 

that it maketh even the error and foolishness 
of man to perfect its praise. It utilizes this 
shadow as a whetstone on which to sharpen 
man's spiritual powers, it cultivates in him 
faculties of resistance, decision, and a master) 
of the lower self. All the promises are given 
"to him who overcometh." Is there not here 
divine recognition of this man-created shadow 
we call evil, which, like all other things, \ 
work for good to them who love God, or the 
personified Good, He who has promised not to 

let us be tempted above that which we are 
able to bear? 

Mattel", whose only office it is to reflect, has 
no intelligence in itself, has no power to choose 
good or evil The higher self is a. one 

with its source — Good. What, then, is it 
that errs ? The lower principle, or state of 
mental consciousness, usually called the mortal 
mind. This term was adopted | ossibly to 
emphasize the fact that only good is immortal, 
and that the lower, imperfect registration of 
thoughts and events soon perishes. 



GOOD AND EVIL 73 

The human mind is the soul's outermost 
gate, and it has a reflex action, from within 
outward, from the external to the inner reg- 
ister. It is the mediator between the 
temporal and the eternal. At this gateway 
accumulates the driftwood which diverse 
currents of thought, with strong tidal sweep, 
have left at its portals, the errors of other 
minds, the beliefs of the world's atmosphere 
with which it mingles, whose tumult drowns 
the spirit's guiding voice. And still the mind 
looks outward and seeks to manifest on the 
external plane. 

Here is the choosing between good and 
evil, the light and the shadow, and in that 
outer darkness, which the mind does not 
realize is darkness, phantoms appear realities, 
false measurements are taken, judgments are 
warped, and the testimony of the senses is 
the limit of the mind's perceptions. It misses 
the clew that would guide it through this 
mazy labyrinth back to its source, and so 



74 A LOOK UPWARD 

man gropes in this forest of illusions, amid 
spectres of his own creating, and wanders 
out and away from his Father's house, the 
fair home of the soul. He sets up a standard 
of material verities, and is enslaved then 
The little puff of solidified vapor which his 
own creative impulse has evolved, Ik- bows 
ore and serves, he environs it with anxious 
fears and watchful solicitude. Is it weary, is 
it in pain, is it fevered ? Then, alas ! there- 
is no helper, since matter is real and immuta- 
ble, since the body is the man, and material 
laws the only ones he recognizes. All efforts 
at alleviation remain on the material plane, 
they are sought in kingdoms below the one 
he occupies, those which he has outgrown, 
whose potencies he holds within himself, 
every one, as he likewise holds the power to 
mount above their need and his condition. 
Meanwhile the soul waits on its hills of light 
and patiently bides its time, with sure confi- 
dence in the final victory, knowing that 



GOOD AND EVIL 75 

through weakness strength will become man- 
ifest, through impurity will the beauty of 
purity be recognized, through suffering will 
perfection be attained. 

And when the cloud above the world's heart 
grows so murky and dense that the infinite 
Good is forgotten, when the earth-children 
wander blindly in their wilderness of doubts 
and mistakes, then an Avatar is sent, a 
mighty Breath from a mightier Source, an 
embodiment of the Divine Essence, who 
comes as the highest expression of the 
Perfected Man, which is always one with 
personified Deity. And this supernal Light 
shineth through all the darkness, while the 
darkness comprehendeth it not. It takes on 
the external form of the mistaken ones and 
dwells among them. It labors and toils with 
the poorest of them all, Itself homeless and 
reviled. Still It blesses those who curse. It 
heals their infirmities, opens the blind eyes, 
unstops the deaf ears, raiseth the fallen and 



y6 A LOOK UPWARD 

the bruised, cheereth the faint, beareth all 
their burdens, comforteth their sorrows and 
yearneth over them with infinite tenderness. 
The same majestic lips that utter the scathing 
"Woe unto you, hypocrites!" tremble with 
pity over false Jerusalem : u Ah, how often 
would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
her wings, and 'ould not" Justice and 

tenderness hang in equal balance, power and 
humility, majesty and utter self-abnegation. 

And what return did man render for this 
unspeakable gift? The lower carnal pro] 
sities which we call evil, Standing self-accused 
and condemned before this matchless incarna- 
tion of Truth and Goodness, laid violent hold 

upon the gentle messenger, they tore him, 
spat upon him, and beat him ; they crowned 
him mockingly with cruel thorns, and d 
down to destruction the mortal shrine which 
his spirit had stooped to vital ; 

But the veil of the Temple was rent in 



GOOD AND EVIL JJ 

twain, revealing the innermost truth ; the 
message was given, life and immortality had 
dawned upon the world. The spirit of man 
was touched and quickened, his mind illumined 
above the level of sense perception to the 
plane of the real and the true. Henceforth 
the law of gravitation operates on the spiritual 
plane. The attraction of the soul upwards is 
felt, and meets with glad response by those 
whose feet still tread material pathways. Mat- 
ter is dethroned, no longer to reign king and 
lord of the heart of man, who realizes now 
that spirit is the only life, intelligence, or 
causation, and that all power and freedom are 
his inalienable birthright. Man recognizes 
gifts and attributes within his soul that can 
make of disease a forgotten word, that can bid 
pain depart from every sphere of life. He is 
no longer a dumb, blind creature of untoward 
circumstances, but a creator of his own envi- 
ronments. For the legacy of the Lightbearer, 
his parting message of appeal and hope, which 



78 A LOOK UPWARD 

like a morning star sheds its beams on our 
advancing path, is : 

" Be ye perfect, even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect." 



THE FORMATIVE TOWER 79 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FORMATIVE POWER 

The philosophy of the Orient endows man 

with seven principles — the divine soul or the 

indwelling Atma, the spiritual soul, the think- 

reasoning soul, the animal soul, the astral 

or psychic body, and the vitality which connects 

the same with the physical body. The Ego 

can manifest itself on three different planes, 

the spiritual, the psychic, and the physical, 

rything being necessarily subjective on the 

her plane before it can become objective on 

the next lower plane. 

The aim of Theosophy, of Christianity, and 
of Spiritual Science alike is to encourage the 
subjugation of the lower man, to emancipate 
him from the control of the animal soul, with 



80 A LOOK UPWARD 

its appetites and passions, and to cultivate his 
conscious connection with the higher principles, 
the spiritual life. But only Spiritual Science 
endeavors to emancipate him from all painful 
physical conditions, helps him to use the body 
as an instrument without being fettered by it. 
Even Christian ministers, followers of him 
who sent his disciples into all the world to 
" preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out 
devils," are faithful in their obedience to only 
part of the command. They do not make their 
faith practical. They preach of one who can 
save to the uttermost; why not, then, from sick- 
ness as well as from sin ? Man has within 
himself unlimited \ of emancipation 

from all bondage. The Christ came to show 
by example what possibilities are already ours. 
" The works I dove shall do also." Have we 
followed the pattern? Has not the copy set 
for us by the Divine Schoolmaster been most 
feebly, imperfectly traced by our blundering, 
stupid hands ? 



THE FORMATIVE POWER 8 1 

Ihe thread of vitality which we call life is 
never a property or an emanation of the 
physical body. It can never be re-enforced 
on physical grounds alone. Spontaneous gen- 
eration has been effectually disproven by 
modern science. There is but one source of 
Life. It is circumference more than centre, 
in which we are immersed as are the fishes in 
the sea. We absorb it through our spiritual 
principle, and it is thence transmitted on the 
vital thread to the physical organism, which, 
although nourished on the plane to which 
it is related, perishes when its connection 
with the spirit is severed. This second prin- 
ciple is a bridge between the spiritual and the 
material, and over this bridge is transmitted 
from the rational or thinking principle, the 
formative power — even our thoughts — a 
tangible vehicle for a tangible substance. 

Thought is the foundation, the pillar and 
cap-stone of man's organism, nay, more, of 
the world's structure and progress. Thought 



82 A LOOK UPWARD 

exists on the psychical plane as visible sub- 
stance, colored according to its nature or 
intensity. Sensitives, on this mortal plane, 
can see the emanations from mind to mind 
as vibrations of different colored light, and 
also perceive by the halo, or aura, surrounding 
an individual, the temperature or peculiarity 
of thought in which he habitually indul 
Other psychics, who itiveness is on 

the plane of sensation rather than of sight, 
can feel the nature and character of thought 
entertained towards them by any stranger 
whom they chance to meet. If unfavorable, 
a blow on the chest could not be more tan- 
gible. Such as these, whose i msness 
is not confined to the physical plane, can 
ive the transfer of a thought from any 
distance. The human voice is but a conces- 
to the material plane, adapted for the use of 
those whose inner sense is not developed to 
note more subtle vibrations than those of 
sound, as the deaf use the still cruder medium 



THE FORMATIVE POWER 83 

of manual signs. Intelligence can be expressed 
on any plane. Therefore why should we not 
have psychical telephonic communication, as well 
as the less perfect method in the material world 
which crudely copies such transmission of 
thought ? May we not look forward to a period 
of development in the future when such com- 
munication will supersede material telephones, 
a sensitive operator at each end of the line to 
catch the thought-waves sent by the thought- 
transferer, a method it would be impossible 
to cripple by storms, or long-line distances ? 
It is a well-known fact that our North Ameri- 
can Indians had means of. warning distant 
tribes of danger, when no messenger was 

it between the scattered encampments. 

It has been supposed of little moment what 
sentiment colors our thoughts in the retire- 
ment of our homes, if we prudently maintain a 
polite reticence of speech in regard to our 
opinions, but we are learning in these days 
that there are no secret thoughts, that we are 



84 A LOOK UPWARD 

wielding the most potent weapons of blessing 
or bane, the thought-realm being the plane of 
reality and power. The mind of man is often 
a most unruly steed, a ship without a pilot, 
a monarchy without a king. It is a popular 
belief that we cannot help our thoughts. They 
drift across our consciousness like wayward, 
wandering clouds, they spring upon us from 
the most unexpected, often unwelcome quar- 
ters, we give ourselves up to their sway, and 
muse, by the hour. The spirit subjected to 
the influence of this erratic leadership is 
dragged downward by the polluting tendency 
of material thoughts until held in physical 
bondage by erroneous opinions. Our mental 
atmosphere befogs the mirror whereon divine 
intelligence might stream, and thence be 
reflected. 

As spirit is the only substance, as the life 
that is spirit is the only reality, so its offspring, 
our thoughts, are real and tangible things to 
the spiritually illumined understanding, they 



Till; FORMATIVE POWER 85 

are potent forces for good or ill to ourselves 
and to others. Among the truest words of 
holv writ are "as a man thinketh, so is he" 
We all know how a sudden fright will blanch 
the visage, set the heart to beating wildly, 
cause the limbs to weaken and tremble, all 
these demonstrations being but the reflec- 
tion in the physical of the thought of fear. 
The effect would be the same under a false 
alarm. Similarly, though with more sub- 
tlety, a thought of envy, jealousy, spite, or 
malice will produce a bilious condition in 
the system, living under the mental bondage 
of another will produce restricted physical 
action, a discontented spirit breeds neuralgia, 
losing one's temper or harboring angry 
thoughts is a prolific cause of the inflammatory 
condition known as a heavy cold, w r hich the 
sufferer wonders how he caught, though it is 
most frequently attributed to the east wind 
that prevailed yesterday. We can think a cold 
on to another if we indulge in ill-will toward 



86 A LOOK UPWARD 

him, an east wind of thought. If thoughts 
are real and tangible things, what barbed arrows 
may we not dart at the life, health, and happi- 
ness of our brother, who is off his guard, to 
say nothing of the baleful reflex action upon 
ourselves, the backward kick of the gun. 
What blessings also may we not scatter abroad 
on friend and stranger alike if we keep our 
thoughts pure and strong and ennobling, if 
we think no evil, if we replace the unkind 
thought with the charity that suffers long and 
is invariably kind, if we peremptorily decide 
what thoughts shall henceforth find lodgement 
in our minds. What a world this might 
become, what perfecting of health it might 
enjoy. We fear the half-understood foi 
steam and electricity, yet deal with a more 
potent, less perfectly understood force every 
day, one more deadly or beneficent as we shall 
determine. 

How ignorantly all our prominent men are 
tJiouglit to death. It is very noticeable that 



THE FORMATIVE POWER 87 

n a slight attack of illness to such a one, 
under which an ordinary patient would speedily 
recover, almost invariably results fatally, simply 
because of the deplorable publicity given to 
the details of every hour in the sick-room, the 
jht and ignorance that deliberately invites 
a current of thought which no sound, healthy 
person could bear unscathed, and which so often 
lilts in unintentional murder in the first 
jree. If we feel the impression of one per- 
son's thought, how incalculable the effect of 
thousands of combined minds fastened at once 
upon one already prostrated individual. And yet, 
no sooner does one of our statesmen or divines 
sink wearied under his pressure of duty than 
the worst possible construction is immediately 
given to his case, telegrams speed forth from 
that sick-room, which should be an inn of recu- 
peration and upliftment, and spread all over 
the land, dipping under the sea to other lands, 
that there is no hope of recovery, and imme- 
diately sixty million thought-telegrams flash 



88 A LOOK UPWARD 

back "no hope," and are focussed on that one 
worn and fainting spirit ; faithful reporters 
write up the obituary which must appear as 
soon as the great heart ceases to beat, and that 
thought is straightway externalized. There is 
thenceforth "no hope." But what if all those 
combined minds in conjunction, and with a 
knowledge of this truth, should send the suf- 
ferer a strong uplifting thought-current of health 
and vigor? could he resist the tremendous force 
of such righteous treatment ? 

Every thought-wave is actualized on the 
external plane. We cannot move until we 
think to do it. Every action has this le 
as motive power, every condition of physical 
life is the outcome of thought alone. Then 
what excuse for unfavorable bodily conditions? 
We are true creators with material at hand 
which we fail to intelligently utilize, we bear 
burdens whose weight a truthful thought would 
disarm. We are the result of all that we have 
been, our life-chain is made up of Karmic links 



THE FORMATIVE TOWER 89 

from other experiences in former existences ; 
we also bear the impress of the thoughts of 
others, the prenatal beliefs of our parents, 
the fears of guardians and friends. None of us 
can live his life alone. Race-beliefs and ances- 
tral prejudices color our mental atmosphere. 

Take, for example, that common form of 
slavery, the habit of taking cold, a subservience 
to physical conditions which is quite unneces- 
Does the spirit feel cold, and we are 
spirits? Should we — children of the Infinite 
— remain under the dominion of physical laws, 
of changes in the temperature, or of pure 
atmosphere considered as draught ? But from 
infancy children are nurtured in nothing more 
carefully than the fear of taking cold, often 
summoned from their ruddy, breezy play by 
the mother's cry: " I'm afraid you will take 
cold." This oft-reiterated lesson is thoroughly 
learned, colors their whole life, and is trans- 
mitted to the next generation of slaves to this 
fear. It would be amusing if not so pitiful 



90 A LOOK UPWARD 

to see what careful precautions are taken by 
the most enlightened minds to guard against 
colds, these fearful souls seeing in mind not 
the cold alone, but the possible result thereof, 
diphtheria, pneumonia, and other creation 
fear, that have no existence on the plain 
spirit, on which it is possible now to live. 
How quickly the expression of alarm and 
apprehension would be transformed to one 
of tranquil assurance and security had the 
spirit ever learned its power. Material fears 
create scarecrows, before whom people pros- 
trate themselves, not knowing or realizing the 
divine powers which they poa the possi- 

bilities of absolute freedom from physical 
bondage. As long as the necessity of taking 
cold is a tenet of their faith or fear, as long 
as they lend themselves to its sway, they 
will continue to sneeze and cough at every 
convenient opportunity. 

The popular fling at metaphysical treatment, 
a remark one often hears, is: "Oh, you must 



THE FORMATIVE POWER 91 

think you have not got it, as the Scientists 
do." Nothing could more quickly show the 
speaker's inadequate conception of the truth. 
Metaphysicians stop a long distance short of 
that position. They do not have to "think 
they have not got it." They live on a plane 
above one related to any such "it," whose 
unreality to their enlightened comprehension 
is so apparent. Like attracts like, and we 
always relate ourselves to that upon which 
our thought dwells and therefore endows with 
power. We can be whatever we choose to 
be, we can live as physical beings, subject to 
all lower conditions, or we can live, now and 
here, the life of the free-born spirit, on the 
plane of spiritual reality. Dropping the 
physical form as we do in so-called death 
gives us nothing of power, of wisdom, or of 
strength. The psychical form which we then 
wear is a little more enduring than the 
physical. It is not visible to organs made 
crude enough to discern material objects, but 



92 A LOOK UPWARD 

if the indwelling spirit has not hitherto out- 
grown mundane attractions and limitations, its 
next experience will be no higher or more 
unfettered than its last. 

This hour is the spirit's opportunity. Spirit 
is a substance having two poles or gates. To 
live in health it is only necessary to keep the 
gate closed which opens downward into the 
realm of shadows and unrest, to be always 
positive in that direction, and negative alw 
upward toward the source of all Life, which 

we never can exhaust, the unfailing fountain 

of strength, of power and wholeness. " Walk 
in the spirit." 



THE BONDAGE OF FEAR 93 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BONDAGE OF FEAR 

It is true that thought is the shaping 
power, that whatever we wish to become we 
have only to keep constantly in mind as an 
ideal, to eventually grow towards the same. 
But thoughts are the offspring of the spiritual 
nature, and if we live in the spirit, the thoughts 
will correct themselves ; they can then only 
express the purity, chastity, and beauty which 
are attributes of the spirit. 

Spiritual Science is imperfectly represented 
when confined to the mental plane alone. It 
is the foundation of all there is in life, or its 
philosophy, being in harmony with all truth. 
It is Theosophy applied, it is Christianity in 
motion. There is but one Truth, and every 



94 A LOOK UPWARD 

religion, or science, copies its little share of 
the word of God, its one scattered ray of the 
all-diffusive Light. But the true metaphysical 
healer works less on the plane of thought 
than in the realm of spirit. He endeavors 
emphatically to change the mind of his patient, 
to turn the current of his thought into healthy 
channels, but, more than this, he strives to 
release the spirit from bondage, he aids it to 
live its own untrammelled life, which will then 
express itself in pure thinking and a corre- 
sponding externa] manifestation. >ercive 

mental control is never excusable unless in 

of delirium or insanity. In such extreme 

conditions even a mesmeric control of the spirit 

in prison by the operator may be allowable 
until the chain of error is broken, when the 

equal rights of each individual should be 
strictly maintained. 

Here we touch upon the law of Karma. 
The healer can never become a vicarious 
atonement for the sins and mistakes of his 



THE BONDAGE OF FEAR 95 

patient or pupil. Whatever the sufferer has 
sown he must also reap, but whereas erroneous 
living is more frequently the result of ignorance 
than of wilful misdoing, it lies in the path of 
the healer's duty to remove the scales from 
blind eves, and point out the path of rectitude. 
As each day bears its own Karmic record, as 
we have the possibility of making good Karma 
every moment, of wiping out old stains and 
annulling their effect, to-morrow's condition 
must be vastly improved by the intelligent, 
painstaking manufacture of good Karma to- 
day, by tempers restrained and faults overcome. 
Karmic results may be needlessly prolonged 
1 slavish acceptance thereof, or an unintelli- 
it, pessimistic outlook regarding one's own 
ssibilities. There is no need of clinging to 
the burden as a penance when the hour has 
struck for its removal, which enfranchisement 
the divine soul within can hasten. The time 
is ripe for a world's emancipation from disease 
and infirmity. We have grown as a race to 



96 A LOOK UPWARD 

the comprehension of our innate health, from 
the fact that we are component parts of a 
Perfect Unit ; we awake to the exercise of 
our powers as spirits, controlling all which 
lies below us. 

If the next generation of mothers and fathers 
could grow into the realization of this truth 
that there need be no dis< - the body 

only presents what the atmosphere of thought 
reflects) let their minds hold only spiritual 
truths, what manner of children would be born 
unto them, and, letting conviction grow doubly 
sure with th wth of years, and establish- 

ment in a health which nothing can destroy, 
what would our grandchildren think to look 
back on the present status of the world's 
thought, how would they be mystified by the 
long hard names, by which in these days we 
try to spell error and mistake. Our nomen- 
clature is richer in this respect than that of 
former days. A cold on the lungs, with fever, is 
now pneumonia, an inflamed throat is diphthe- 



THE BONDAGE OE FEAR 97 

ria, or, at the very least, tonsilitis, hoarseness 
and weakness of the throat is bronchitis, 
lurking bodily pain, if its position justifies it, 
is pronounced sciatica, and the fear and anxiety 
of the patient increases in proportion to the 
number of syllables that spells out his malady. 
A case could be cited of a lady who, holding 
the thought of humor in her blood, was treated 
seven months by a skilful physician for ulcera- 
tion of the limbs, her despondency far more 
increased by this portentous diagnosis than 
by any discomfort attending her condition. 
Catarrh of the bowels has become a fashionable 
ailment in recent times. Whatever the malady, 
if the mind unenlightened spiritually, however 
erudite on mortal planes, holds persistently such 
thoughts and beliefs, and naturally dwells upon 
the possibility of a similar infliction, the 
physical condition will certainly respond to 
the mental invitation. 

How lamentable is it in this advanced age 
to have a plague or an epidemic sweep over a 



98 A LOOK UPWARD 

land, or jump from country to country, as in 
the recent case of the Russian la grippe, which 
laid low the most valuable lives in its course, 
like a cyclone uprooting giant oaks. But in 
the latter case, both forces — those of vegetable 
growth, and of the elements — are on the same 
physical plane; the greater naturally over- 
coming the les Those whom an epidemic 
prostrates are not of the genus matter. They 
are spiritual beings, and if the theory be ur. 
that the disease is a microbe, a living thing 
which is breathed in by atmospheric inhalation, 
the question still arises which is mightier, the 
insignificant microbe or the immortal godlike 
soul, that in its past evolutionary experience 
has outgrown and overcome the lower king- 
dom? There were tlio.se in our land whose 
nostrils were not closed, who freely inhaled 
the same presumably tainted air, whom no 
disease-creating animalcukx could affect, who 
walked unscathed in and out of localities 
where the pestilence was rife. They exercised 



THE BONDACxE OF FEAR 99 

no watchful care of their health, used no 
forcible mental argument to prevent contagion 
or enhance security ; they simply knew it 
could not assail the spiritual nature, on which 
plane they were living. The majority of our 
citizens, on the contrary, prepared themselves 
to attract and assimilate the germs of the 
epidemic, by making it their chief topic of 
conversation. On cars or street, in parlors 
and counting-rooms, little else was discussed 
but the minutiae of its "run," the early symp- 
toms, the suddenness of its attack, and at 
what stage the disease was fraught with great- 
est danger. Everybody's mental atmosphere 
was saturated with malarial thought ; its 
externalization was inevitable. Becoming dis- 
cordant, they related themselves to discord. 
Sentinels of fear and anxious foreboding- 
occupied the outposts of every one's con- 
sciousness, they invited the epidemic by their 
constant expectancy. They unwittingly treated 
themselves for every symptom they had ever 



IOO A LOOK UPWARD 

heard of. Consequently we had the spectacle 
in this century, and this country, to which the 
message of Truth has come, of whole commu- 
nities of intelligent souls overcome by a 
microbe which a microscope could scarcely 
detect ; business was crippled, schools closed, 
and families were plunged in mourning for 
their dear ones, so suddenly stricken down. 
It was indeed a sad thing from the suffering 
it caused, the valuable lives sacrificed to its 
potent sway, but sadder far because it was all 
so needless, except among the very ignorant 
who have not grown to realize they are any- 
thing more than bodies, the life of the animal 
being the only one to which they h. 
consciously attained. 

Doctors, who could not stay or shorten the 
complaint, but only strive with faithful, sym- 
pathetic ministration to alleviate its rigors 
with palliative drugs, which man also has 



outgrown, were no more exempt than their 
patients, indeed a large percentage of doctors 



THE BONDAGE OF FEAR IOI 

in every city were among the first to succumb 
to the painful malady, showing the imperfect- 
ness of their system of treatment for the 
world's needs, however it might be honored 
by their devotion. The apostles of the new 
dispensation, on the contrary, were not over- 
taken by the plague although coming in contact 
with it repeatedly on its most potent side — 
the realm of thought. They stood the test, and 
never lost a case, finding this unwelcome visitor 
the easiest of errors to overthrow. Must we 
not then admit the validity and truth of the 
position they hold ? Would not a study of 
Spiritual Science be advisable as an effective 
means of physical defence, if not for the higher 
incentive of spiritual living ? 

The same proneness of susceptibility to con- 
tagion noted on a larger scale in the Russian 
influenza is repeated in more confined locali- 
ties every season. Typhoids, diphtherias, and 
agues periodically follow the overflow of green 
meadows by spring floods, or the decline of 



102 A LOOK UPWARD 

vegetation in the autumnal months. The fear- 
lessness of bravado is insufficient protection 
as long as a belief remains in the ////conscious 
mind of the possibility of illness. If the gate 
is not closed downwards, if one lives on the 
plane of physical realities, a contagious disc 
is often contracted when the conscious mind 
is unaware of its prevalence. More frequently 
still, a di which is not cont ! is 

reproduced in a mind which dwells sympa- 
thetically upon the case and its symptoms. 

A carbuncle on the neck is not usually 

considered contagious, yet a lady recently, 
whose deal* friend lay dying of such painful 
visitation, was attacked by a violent pain in 

the back oi her neck, and with every symptom 

of at least an ah- which she tried her 

best to encourage by every fostering thought. 
Would the intelligent physician advise 
physical treatment for her condition, a scat- 
tering lotion for the neck, or a purgative for 
the blood? Would he minutely examine, or 



THE PONDAGE OF FEAR 103 

stroke into placidity, the facial muscles to re- 
move the distortion caused by distress or fright ? 
Sometime in the not far distant future, will 
not a treatment of disease seem amusing that 
begins and ends in the realm of effect without 
touching the cause, without educating the 
race to the standard of just men made perfect, 
each one his own physician and high-priest 
unto God, no longer at the mercy of fears 
and erroneous beliefs that mock God's per- 
fection, His love and tenderness ? Thought is 
the shaping power. Our beliefs and opinions 
make us what we are, invariably. On them 
we build ourselves to any design we have in 
mind. If we thoroughly believed we were one 
with God — think of it — God living Himself 
out in us, where would be the limit to our 
mastery and control of all conditions ? As 
soon as we stop fearing and believing in 
sickness, it can no longer attack us; according 
to the old couplet, 

u The best receipt for health, say what you will, 
Is never to suppose you can be ill." 



104 A L0° K UPWARD 

God is the all-good, the all-perfect. Can 
any path be wrong, or theory mistaken, which 
leads to the realization of that perfection, 
which builds up a life lost in Him ? Can any 
form of worship be more acceptable than to 
bear about in our bodies the mark of our 
Lord's power, to die daily to our lower nature, 
to be hourly resurrected in that perfect life 
and love which casteth out fear ? 



THE HEALING POWER 105 



CHAPTER IX 



THE HEALING POWER 



This gospel of health, or the state of physical 
freedom as the result of spiritual living and 
righteous thinking, has been often presented 
in an impractical, visionary, or too radical man- 
ner, which has not appealed to the common- 
sense of mankind, even though the demonstra- 
tions of its worth and potency in cases of illness, 
where other treatment has failed, multiply on 
every hand. Every truth must run the gaunt- 
let of ridicule and opposition, its advocates that 
of derision and scorn. But the heterodoxy of 
every age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. 
Humbugs are short-lived. A craze is of 
mushroom growth, springing up in a night to 
wither in a day. The " mind-cure craze," as 
it has been often designated, has passed its 



106 A LOOK UPWARD 

trial season. The sensation-lovers who first 
espoused its cause have dropped away, after 
finding "nothing in it." The mercenary, who 
see only the possible pecuniary advantage to 
be gained in any new movement, have in some 
instances learned to love wisdom better than 
gold, and weaker souls, who have hitherto 
drifted through life without a rudder, have 
found a quiet anchorage for their r 
hearts, and an unfailing compass for future 
guidance, while many sufferers in homes all 
over our land have been raised by its heaven- 
born ministry from years of painful prostration 
to renewed lives of strength and usefulness. 

Noble, unselfish men and women take up 
this banner of Truth, and, by example and 
precept, by voice and pen, in the stud}' or 
chamber, on the platform or by the wayside, 
are presenting its pure gospel to the acceptance 
of those who hear them gladly. There is now, 
perhaps, no city in our country without its 
practitioners in this science of intelligent 



THE HEALING POWER 107 

living, no hamlet that does not possess its 
little share of metaphysical literature, whose 
loan from house to house is in frequent 
demand. Books and pamphlets multiply, mag- 
azines increase in number and have a large 
and appreciative following. Classes are con- 
stantly held by earnest teachers, while little 
groups and coteries of friends meet together 
for mutual query and response, or for discus- 
sion concerning this pearl of great price, 
offered to all without money and without 
price. 

It becomes no longer possible for the world 
to reject this truth, or remain oblivious to the 
rapid progress the movement has made, and 
the strong hold it has taken upon all classes 
of people. Every one numbers on his list of 
friends some firm advocate of its efficacy in 
relieving suffering, in letting the oppressed go 
free, in reforming lives and transforming error 
bound natures It becomes necessary to be 
able at least to discuss it intelligently, or the 



108 A LOOK UPWARD 

tide of the world's progress will sweep on and 
leave us behind. How is the value of any 
truth to be known and tested ? By its works 
alone. " Believe me for the work's sake," said 
the Master. 

What nobler vocation than to follow in the 
footsteps of Him who always preached the 
word and healed the sick conjointly, one being 
as necessary as the other, who by His command, 
" Arise, and sin no more, lest a worse thing 
come upon thee," emphasized the close con 
nection existing between health, and purity of 
life and thought. There must also be an 
intelligent as well as a pure mind, a conscious 
ness awakened to the fact of the soul's own 
divine attributes, and its connection with the 
healing power of the unive: 

And what is the healing power ? We 
cently heard a naturalist allude in a public 
lecture to "a certain class of people who, hav 
discovered the well-nigh limitless power of the 
human will, were utilizing it in the cure of 



THE HEALING POWER 109 

disease." There could be no more imperfect 
understanding of the metaphysician's position. 
His office is that of enlightener, his work one 
of invitation, entreaty, and appeal to the suf- 
ferer's will to choose this day which he will 
serve, God or mammon, flesh or spirit, to 
decide whether he will henceforth live in the 
lower human will, or that of the higher self, 
which is always one with the Divine will. If 
a person of strong will makes, as is frequently 
asserted, the most successful healer, it is 
because that will betokens a strong positive 
nature which naturally carries a fervor of 
conviction with it, which a weaker individuality 
might not do. But the healing power is not 
of a mesmeric nature. When mesmerism is 
used, when an undue control of the mind of 
the patient is exercised by the healer or 
teacher, we find mental malpractice. The 
mesmerism of the friends of the patient, how- 
ever, as well as his own, is a foe against 
which the true healer constantly contends. 



HO A LOOK UPWARD 

Another theory, popularly held, is that only 
weak-minded patients are readily healed, a 
belief to whose fallacy every healer of expe- 
rience can testify. A person of strong mind 
will always hold the seed-thoughts of truth 
most firmly, which produces the quickest, most 
permanent results, while a weaker mind needs 
the prop of constant re-enforcement. 

Is prayer the healin ncy ? Yes, in the 

sense that Dean Stanley defines prayer, that 
" with every aspiration the soul is on its km 
It is the prayer of the flower that exhales its 
fragrance upwards to the source of its life dnd 
beauty. It is the prayer of the water-lily that 
grows away from the slime and mud and 
darkness of its material root, aspiring through 
all the watery depth by which it is encom- 
passed, until it expands in the pure air of 
heaven to the loveliness of its primeval type. 

Is the healing accomplished by electricity 
or by magnetism, is often asked, and instances 
are cited of remarkable cures performed when 



THE HEALING TOWER 



II I 



such agency was employed. There is no doubt 
that such cases are genuine. There is only one 
power in the universe, but a myriad diversity 
of its manifestations. A pure benevolent mind, 
m harmony therewith, cannot help conferring 
a benefit, even though it prove alleviative more 
than curative, in the sense that the sufferer 
has learned nothing of his own being, or the 
laws which would secure his immunity from 
any other similar attack. The sympathetic 
hand, with its gentle soothing touch and seem- 
ingly vitalizing quality, is no more an external 
gate than the organ which mental healers use 
as transmitting avenue — the brain, but it 
occupies a lower plane, inasmuch as the false 
reality of the body and the locality of the 
disorder are fixed more firmly in mind by this 
application ; and that locality is only a chance 
reflection from a cause that is not by this 
method of cure reached in the slightest 
degree. 

Electricity, that potent elixir, the motor- 



112 A LOOK UPWARD 

power of thought, that indispensable agent 
between soul and soul, between worlds and 
suns ; who understands this wonderful expres- 
sion of spirit, who can define it, who safely 
limit its important offices in every channel 
of life ? We have not yet learned our electric 
alphabet, albeit we are spelling out a few 
words, such as light and speed and motion. 
We hitch our chariots, if not to a star, to a 
train of light and power caught, perhaps, from 
the revolving stars, and yet n<> servant more 
faithful than this electric current b ute 

our commission, to summon an I mt, to 

announce our arrival at friendly doors, or 
guard our streets with efficient police sur- 
veillance. So subtle is this n, :hereal 
form of matter that one hesitates before 
classing it with material agenci< It seems 
the vanishing point of pure spirit before 
expression begins, the veil between the visi- 
ble and invisible. There is an electric school 
in Paris which is at work on certain lines of 






THE HEALING POWER 113 

manifestation and experiment, from the as- 
sumption that man is himself an electric 
motor, drawing* in with every breath great 
draughts of air, which is electricity in solution, 
and that by learning to store and concen- 
trate these divine powers man approaches 
omnipotence. 

There is a spiritual electric power, a soul- 
force which it might be well to recognize, in 
connection w T ith a spiritually enlightened un- 
derstanding. It is a harmonization with the 
Force which we call God, that which drives 
the suns in their courses with mighty speed, 
that poises their satellites as faithful attend- 
ants, that vitalizes air, water, everything 
which contributes to our present growthful 
experience, a force we have not yet utilized 
as it may be applied by our descendants. 

What, then, is the healing power exercised 
by the Spiritual Scientist ? Life, Law, God, 
call it what you will, it is that Perfect Whole- 
ness of which we are all parts. As soon as 



114 A LOOK UPWARD 

we become awakened to this realization, we 
are healed. Healing consists in the discovery 
that there is nothing to heal, that we are 
always well in spirit, in reality. The method 
therefore is education, more than any mirac- 
ulous transfer of vitality, or curative new 
A lecture often carries with it a stron 
healing influence than any treatment. The 
mind is lifted by the speaker's argument into 
an atmosphere of conviction that works its own 
healing Such instances arc very common, 
because the work must always be accomplished 
in the realm of cause which will produce its 
own healthful result. The patient must there- 
fore heal himself at last. lie mu the 
revivalists used to say, "come under the convic- 
tion" of truth. If he is content alone to receive 
the gift of freedom from the healer, he must 
eventually relapse into slavery. A Lincoln 
could with a stroke of the pen strike off the 
fetters from a race of slaves. He could not 
thereby raise them to a conscious equality 



THE HEALING POWER 1 1 5 

with free manhood. There must be an unfold- 
ment of the bowed and stricken human nature 
which so long has cringed in bondage. 

The weapon which the healer wields is less 
tangible than a pen-stroke, yet it is by no 
means a trivial one. It is a thought strong 
in the truth, a vital power " endowed with 
being, breath, and wing." Does this seem a 
strange remedy with which to quell pain and 
fever ? Try it and test its potency. Silent 
agencies are always the most potent. Do the 
blessed rays of sunlight fall noisily upon the 
earth, to which they carry life and quickening, 
or on the window-panes when they flood our 
rooms with radiance, or on our brows which 
we raise to meet their w r arm kiss ? Is the 
touch rude or clamorous ? Do we ever hear 
the dew fall on a thirsty flower, or a leaf grow, 
listen ever so closely in a season when Nature's 
forces are most rapidly at work pumping life- 
giving sap into millions of green veins and 
juicy fibres? The working of God's thought 



Il6 A LOOK UPWARD 

is always silent, as is ours, which feebly copies 
it. Think not to measure the curative agency 
of thought by the old methods of physical 
tangibility. Thomas, with his " unless I thrust 
my fingers in His side, I will not believe, 
not held up to us for an example to copy. 
Jesus said, " Blessed are they who have not 
seen (physically) and yet have believed. " 

Did any one ever hear an answer to prayer } 
Each thought is a prayer, every desire, each 

aspiration, unuttered or expressed We pray 

to each other, we pray a curse (horrible 
thought) when we indulge in spite or ill-will 
toward another. When we pray "nearer my 
God to thee," do we thereby draw God any 
closer to our atmosphere, He who is with us 
alway, in whom we live and have our being ? 
Nay, by that aspiration we only clear the fogs 
from our own spiritual vision, lift oui 
above them so that we can come into nearer, 
closer realization of the divine abiding Presence 
that can never leave us or forsake us. 



THE HEALING POWER 117 

Similarly our mental appeal to the patient's 
spiritual, diviner nature clears the mists from 
his atmosphere, and in our earnest desire to 
make him realize his divine birthright to 
health and harmony, we join in God's prayer 
to every child of His, we voice His kind, 
loving invitation and entreaty, " Enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord." 



Il8 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER X 

SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 

Theories that read well arc often imprac- 
ticable ; the presentation may be faultless, its 
lo^ic without a flaw, but the power of demon- 
stration seems lacking. Now, how shall we 
demonstrate this science of healing II ow 

do we treat our patients? How is a treatment 

given ? Is there any hard and fast rule for 
practice in all cases ? M< -uredly not. 

Many people seem to think there is some 
occult secret which healers hold, some formula ♦ 
whose mechanical repetition produces a magical 
result. Can any one by faithful repetition of 
a certain form of words cool the heated brow, 
or quiet its pain ? Again no! a thousand times, 
no! Better the mere inactive presence of a 
soul strong in the truth, which, by its atmos- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 119 

pherc, radiates a healing', uplifting influence, 
than a parrot-like rehearsal of words and 
phrases imperfectly comprehended or realized 
by him who endeavors prematurely to wield 
these tools. 

Practical suggestions are not easily given, 
for every healer's manner of treatment must 
be essentially his own. No two disciples of 
any truth can demonstrate its potency in the 
same way, and, while the human family is 
so diverse in development and experience, no 
two patients need the same application. No 
formula can ever adapt itself to all cases. 
Formulas are, at their best, the mere dead 
letter of the word, and not the living breath 
of the spirit. A rigid adherence to their use 
is fatal to growth or illumination, as is any 
belief in infallibility, personal or creedal. 
Directions for treatment cannot be given ; 
suggestions may prove useful. Experience 
may point out certain mistakes which the 
novitiate might thereby avoid. 



120 A LOOK UPWARD 

A common error is the tendency to talk too 
much before there has been some demonstra- 
tion. The healer, feeling the first glow of 
enthusiasm natural to the message-bearer of 
so great a gospel, longing with pure desire to 
bring to every soul the freedom he or she has 
found, rushes impetuously and unwisely into a 
prolonged statement of the truth, which the 
patient can no more appropriate than he could 
an address in Choctaw. It arouses antagonism, 
often creates quite pardonable i t, and the 

difficulties of the healer's task are increased. 
The patient has not as yet sought instruction, 
as he will eagerly do when his error is exor- 
cised. There is nothing, O healer, which you 
cannot tell him silently in the universal lan- 
guage of thought. He will think the idea just 
occurred to him p illy, and will give it 

back to you in query at some later day, with 
an awakened appetite and yearning for more 
of light and knowledge. To such, you must 
then be able to give full reason tor the faith 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 121 

that is in you, be so rooted and grounded in 
truth that you need take no thought what ye 
shall say, for it will be given you in that hour 
what ye shall speak and what ye will do. 

Trust in this guidance implicitly. All doubt 
must have been outgrown before the healer's 
work can begin. Remember, you could not 
by any chance possibility have been brought 
into the patient's atmosphere unless there 
were some message you, perhaps better than 
any other, could bear to that soul. The 
message-bearer cannot suffer shipwreck, if she 
meet opposition. Count it all joy when ye 
fall into divers perplexities, for the trial of 
your faith worketh patience, and patience is 
akin to godliness. But avoid argument before 
there has been some demonstration of the 
truth, for the liability of your success will be 
diminished. 

The power of a few bright cheery sentences, 
however, from lip to ear, are often of inesti- 
mable value, are a treatment in themselves. 



122 A LOOK UPWARD 

A nervous, frightened patient can sometimes 
be quieted by the simple impressive repetition 
of that beautiful text : " Thou wilt keep him 
in perfect peace whose mind is staved on 
thee, because he trusteth i?i thee" It falls like 
soothing balm on the troubled heart, and a 
wave of courage and hope comes with the 
"Perfect trust casteth out fear." To the 
lonely and longing for companionship, give the 
"Lo, I am with you alway," and "He shall 
give his angels charge concerning thee." To 
the faltering and timorous, " Lord, 1 believe, 
help thou mine unbelief," and " I can do all 
things through Him who strengthened me." 
Just for to-day, "His is sufficient ;" and 

to the despondent and sorrowing, give that 
appeal which rings like the cheery blast of 
a trumpet, "Lift up your heads, ye 
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting d< and 

the King of glory shall come in." u O trust 
in the Lord, wait patiently for Him > and He 
shall ffive thee tliv hearts desires." "Commit 






SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 123 

your way unto Him, and He shall bring it 
to pass," and there are many more. A wrong 
selection could hardly be made. 

Occasionally bring a breezy bit of anecdote 
from the outside world to change and freshen 
the mental atmosphere of the sick-room. At 
first, the patient will look with surprise and 
almost with reproach that you do not realize 
he is too ill to be interested in that sort 
of thing. It is doubtless very bad taste on 
your part, but make no concession to the 
error by which he is bound, and presently he 
will begin to look for your visit with especial 
interest in whatever brings him something new 
to think about. With this much gained, beware 
of letting conversation drift alone in secular 
channels. Watch for opportunities of sowing 
good seed. Catch up every remark that points 
to material realities and causes. Turn it about, 
albeit gently and amiably, without provoking 
antagonism, and let him see how everything 
looks inverted in the mirror of sense testimony. 



124 A LOOK UPWARD 

Be only careful, if the patient is doubting 
and faithless, that he be not successful in 
treating your mind with his doubts. Always 
bear in mind the unreality of disease. Never 
be deceived by its appearance. You are not 
treating the shadow. There could be no such 
reflection in the body, if there were not 
diseased or erroneous thought-substance to 
cast such corresponding shadow. Treat the 
thought, not as does the homoeopathist, curing 
like with like, but meeting the particular 
current of thought with its opposite, the 
poison with its antidote. To the thought of 
fear, bring a strong mental wave of com 
and hope; overcome despondency with good 
cheer; meet weakness with the firm conviction 
and realization of the strength that m 
faileth ; dispel anxiety and dismal forebodings 
by the bright sunshine of truth which scatters 
every cloud. Let the quicksilver in the 
patient's mental barometer register cheerful- 
ness alone, above the area of threatening 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 125 

weather, and the disease is already baffled 
of its prey, having little left to feed it. Fear 
was the element of contagion to which the 
patient succumbed, fear and belief in the 
reality of physical conditions. Seek to over- 
come this materiality of belief, replace the 
error with truth, the mortal with immortal 
mind, the human with the divine. Be sure 
you can accomplish this. Beware lest you be 
tempted with a thought of doubt concerning 
the final victory. What place is there for 
doubt, when you are a part of the Supreme 
Omnipotence who works through you? Look 
up through yourself to see God. Never try 
to cure a patient, or let him "try" you; you 
will certainly fail if you do. All things are 
possible with God. You and your patient are 
parts of that power which, having created, can 
also heal or re-create the divine image and 
likeness. Our past (would that they were for- 
ever past) material measurements and methods 
of thought and practice prevent our realization 



126 A LOOK UPWARD 

that spirit is the only substance, that spiritual 
doses are as real and tangible in the realm 
of causation — on the plane of the true life — 
as senna and salts ever were in the realm of 
effect. 

It is quite unnecessary, as is sometimes 
taught, to know the full name by which the 
patient is usually designated, or that of any 
of his anc This puerile device perpet- 

uates the mask which we should strive to 
• re. We are working on a plane above 
that of personality. What matters it whether 
this particular expi I rod's thought be 

known in this lower state as John or Jam 
It may receive a "new name" when it has 
overcome mortal limitation. It is now (i 
child, which is enough for us to know ; we 
seek to establish the patient's realization of 
this fact. 

Neither is it imperatively necessary to call 
the roll of every vice or passion mentioned in 
the Decalogue, in the endeavor to hit the 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 12/ 

patient's case by a random shot at the possible 
root of his malady. If the healer possesses 
the true intuitive unfoldment necessary for 
the work, he or she can soon feel the nature 
of the holding thought. But a call to the 
spirit to break the fetters of its material 
thraldom and climb higher, covers the whole 
ground. Old errors, perverted thoughts, will 
almost unconsciously be outgrown as the true 
blessedness of living on the higher plane is 
realized. 

Talk to your patient in thought, as two 
spirits should. His inner self will recognize 
the message as the language which that 
higher soul remembers, and gladly responds 
thereto. Tell him the beautiful story, already 
so often told with varying tongue, that he and 
the Father are one, in essence and in likeness ; 
that to a life hid in God, encompassed and 
ensphered by Divine Love and Strength, no 
weakness can come, no harm befall. Tell 
him his forebodings and alarm are but the 



128 A LOOK UPWARD 

cry of a child in the dark who cannot see 
the tender mother's face which still bends 
above it all the while. Tell him his fleshly 
dress and its conditions bear the stamp of his 
own manufacture. He has it in his power to 
change and alter the same from this moment 
to whatever ideal of health, and comfort, and 
usefulness lie has in mind. Through the con- 
tagion of thought he will soon share your 
utter disregard of physical conditions, will 
ignore them as trivial and unreal, as a mirage 
which occupies a false prominence above the 
horizon of his perception : he will become 
unconscious to all m s from that plane 

as his spiritual consciousness awakens to realize 
his soul's oneness with Perfection. There will 
then be no nc^d of labored denials that matter 
can be fevered or in pain, or exhibit any but 
a delegated power. The patient's own aroused 
spirit makes this unnecessary. Even in a 
stupor, or faint, his spirit cannot escape this 
call. It recognizes the language of Truth, 






SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 129 

and, drinking from that fount, returns to raise 
its instrument with renewed force and vigor. 
The tempting thoughts as they arise thereafter 
to nudge his elbow, one by one, he will himself 
subdue, and grow stronger by the effort. 

All patients, it is true, cannot thus speedily 
become conquerors. Many strange natures 
are met in practical experience. It is neces- 
sary to be all things to all men, if by any 
means we can gain some. We must be wise 
as serpents, while harmless as doves ; the dual 
nature, which means ripened development. 
Some patients are like swamps, sluggish, 
unnavigable either by land or water; not 
wholly devoid of bright sunny spots, but 
abounding in unexpected quicksands, deep, 
dark pools of error which it is a discouraging 
task to empty. The soil does not hold firmly 
the roots of the thought-plants we endeavor 
to nourish. Steady, patient toil is necessary 
here, thorough irrigation, uprooting and infill- 
ing, in season and out of season, till the waste 



130 A LOOK UPWARD 

place is redeemed, as it invariably will be, and 
yields abundant harvest. And there are nat- 
ures like the placid surface of a summer lake; 
they ripple in response to every breath, yield 
at a touch, reflect the light of truth most 
quickly, joyously. Clouds may hover above, 
but do not overshadow them long, while God's 
sun of righteousness, with healing in its beams, 
pierces and warms and thrills the innern 
depths of their transparent hearts. 

First and always lift the patient's thought 
and faith away from the personality of the 
healer, to the principle that heals. Never, 
never answer "yes" to the query, "< 
you cure me?" Say emphatically, "No, no, 
the power to heal lies between your own 
soul and God, is as much a latent power of 
your soul as mine. If the tie which connects 
you is slackened, and you do not feel its hold, 
I may unite the broken links, tighten the 
bond, or open your eyes to do your own 
mending, and then I drop away, needed no 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 131 

longer." Try to encourage forgetfulness of 

the instrument. Healers often thoughtlessly 
declare, " Oh, yes, indeed, I can cure you," 
and frequently recount their really praise- 
worthy victories with, " I cured such and such 
an one." They mean rightly, but it is the 
TmtJi which worketh in us, and through us, 
to will and to do. Avoid making any promises 
with " I " in them, or any other promises either. 
Assure the inquiring patient that he doubtless 
can and will be healed, or grow to a realization 
of the health that is already his own, but place 
his confidence where it belongs. Tell him also 
that healing is the very lowest demonstration 
of this Truth ; tell him that we are working 
to educate and uplift humanity to a plane 
where neither physician nor metaphysician 
will be needed, a millennium whose dawn 
every true-hearted doctor would welcome as 
gladly as we. All that physical practice can 
do is to make the outside of the cup and 
platter a little cleaner. It is the life we would 



132 A LOOK UPWARD 

change, the thought we would uplift, the soul- 
force unfold, for it is a Christian life the 
enfranchised patient must lead, not alone a 
treatment to be received by the spoonful, from 
the possible spiritual surplus of the healer. 

Treatments should not be given too fre- 
quently. Nature's methods of growth are 
gradual, with waiting seasons and periods of 
seeming rest. God's work never hurries. 
Instantaneous cures are possible, but quite 
exceptional. A severe case must of course 
receive for awhile daily attention, but the 
ordinary patient should very early learn to 
walk alone, which he will never do under too 
close espionage, or without time to assimilate 
in his spiritual fibre the new food he has 
received. Of course, no imperative rule can 
be given here. The intelligent healer will 
rightly divide the word of Truth to the 
separate need of every student. 

We have spoken of treatment in silent mind, 
of the silent transference of thought, of replac- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TREATMENT 133 

ing the diseased material thought of the patient 
with strong, healthy, truthful thoughts ; but 
the best and highest form of treatment is 
above and beyond all thought. It is a silent 
treatment in the sense that to be alone with 
silence is to be alone with God ; for God does 
not speak in the whirlwind of argument, or 
in the tempest of mental conflict, but when 
these are past, in the still small voice. Far 
better than the old formula, " Tom Jones, 
listen to me>" is it to develop in the patient 
the possibility of listening to the voice of God 
in his own soul, the voice heard only in the 
inner silence, whose message is of higher 
purport than that of any healer, however true 
and beautiful his affirmation may be. All 
physical laws have their spiritual correspond- 
ences, and it is well known that for some of 
the chemist's experiments the atmosphere of 
his laboratory must be one of perfect tran- 
quillity. Alum, for instance, makes the most 
beautiful crystallization when the utmost quiet 



134 A LOOK UPWARD 

prevails. It is in this atmosphere, also, that 
Truth crystallizes most perfectly. 

As the treatment goes on, the need of even 
silent argument seems to diminish ; we realize 
that it is unnecessary, because we and our 
patient are two spirits in the unseen universe, 
where there is no time or place for discord; 
messages from the senses no longer reach us; 
the contact with chair or floor is scarcely felt ; 
we enjoy the freedom that is our rightful 
inheritance, using the body but not fettered 
by it, a Nirvana-like absorption of the Real. 
From this plane of pure spirit, our call to the 
other spirit to arouse from its bondage cannot 
fail of response, the spirit in prison repents. 
Error can never again have such firm hold 
over the enfranchised soul, or the body make 
successful endeavor to reflect painful condi- 
tions. Nay, for where the spirit of God is, 
there is liberty. " Stand fast, therefore, in the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and 
be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage/' 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 135 



CHAPTER XI 

SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 

Application of this Truth can be made, 
treatments can be given as well absently as 
in the immediate presence of the patient, 
though, ensphered as we are in the Omni- 
presence, how can there be such a thing as 
"absent" treatment? We cannot treat where 
God is not. Distance exists only in matter, 
not in mind or spirit. Both space and time 
are not, in the realm where we work. Two 
minds in one household can remain widely 
asunder, two spirits of closest consanguinity 
by ties of blood bear no soul-relation to each 
other. To those who can meet in thought, 
material distance is no longer remembered. 

In treating an absent patient refuse to 



136 A LOOK UPWARD 

recognize that your message must travel to 
reach him. Deny distance, annihilate it in 
thought. For the time being, there is nothing 
in the universe but you two souls and God. 
It is an assistance to some healers to bring 
the patient near them in mind, to imagine 
him sitting in an adjacent chair; while a more 
active spirit, one who has found its wings, 
may find it easier to fly forth and find the 
sufferer. Sometimes the strongest treatment 
can be given absently. It is more f to 

hold the patient in thought as a perfect 
reflection of the divine idea, when the deflec- 
tion, or distorted image, is not evidenced to the 
senses. Modern cures of a similar character 
to that of the centurion's servant everywhere 
abound, and really should occasion no surprise 
as we outgrow material methods of thought. 
When absent from the flesh we are forever 
with the Lord, and with each other in spirit, 
which is reality. 

In giving absent treatment it is advisable, 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 137 

or is of very great assistance, to have a certain 
time appointed for your interview. Ask the 
patient to sit quietly and alone for ten or 
fifteen minutes to receive the treatment. A 
reverential attitude of mind on his part, or 
one of waiting receptivity, is to be desired, 
and the patient should also lift his mind 
wholly and entirely away from the healer to 
the Infinite Source from whence the healing 
tide must flow, and, realizing that it can flow 
also from his own unborn divine possibilities, 
let him lift his thought towards his own 
higher nature away from the lower, treading 
down all thought of the material body exactly 
as he would tread water, if in danger of 
drowning, to keep his mouth in the air. 
Exactly so, he can reach up into the pure 
realm of spirit for the vital breath of the soul. 
In fact, there is a demonstration often met in 
practice, a deep, long, restful breath (unlike 
the sigh which expresses the weariness of a 
restless heart), a fluttering upwards of the 



138 A LOOK UPWARD 

uncaged spirit as the bars of its prison-house 
are unloosed, a demonstration which rejoi 
the heart of the healer. It is the infilling 
the breath of God, the swell of Deity's uplifting 
wave. 

Discord in home life is a prolific source of 
illness. The common polite coin 
society are neglected there. We say to our 
own what we would never say to those less 
dear. If one member of a family stands in 
fear of another, if only in fear of his tongue, 
that mental bondage will prodiM 
action somewhere in the physical system. 

There is an apostolic injunction to the intent 
that wives should submit themselves to their 
husbands. With all respect, and honor, and 
kindly service — yes — but the wife is just as 
much an individual thought of God as the hus- 
band, and vice versa, Many acute dys] 
have sprung from nothing else than marital 
slavery, a one-sided subservience ; and many 
such have been cured by ignoring the existence, 



SUGGESTION'S CONTINUED 139 

even in shadow, of digestive organs, by simply 
changing the attitude of the dependent spirit to 
one of freedom from a craven submission that 
was unjust and productive of harm to both hus- 
band and wife, by setting the key-note of their 
life-score to a finer rhythm and harmony, 
whose modulations shall henceforth hold fewer 
accidentals. 

We hear much of diseases of inheritance. 
Patients talk loftily and with much family pride 
of this or that malady which had always been in 
their ancestral families, or all their maternal 
aunts had died of it, as if it were some title 
or coat of arms, whose appearance in their own 
person was a badge of distinction rather than 
a disgrace. Ask such an one what he inherits 
from his heavenly Father. There is an inher- 
itance of the soul of perfect freedom, strength, 
and vigor. Should not the higher inheritance 
annul and overcome the lower, as we are not 
bodies merely, but of the order of Soul, the 
kinship of the flesh being often a mistaken 



140 A LOOK UPWARD 

one ? And the lower birthmark was only 
transmitted thought. The body renews itself 
constantly on the physical plane, by the casting 
off of effete elements and the accretion, 
through absorption and assimilation, of new 
properties, but the mental state bearing still 
the same impress, stamps every new element 
as it appears with the same taint ; therefore, 
the false mortal inheritance is needlessly 
perpetuated. Di> of inheritance, so 

called, however firmly held, are m< isily 

healed. 

A similar kind of bondage, frequently met, 
is prenatal thought, th( IT of a mental 

birthmark. How many children bear on their 
sad, pathetic little faces the story of unwel- 
come maternity? If the pregnant mother 
carries a heavy heart, the thought-bias of 
that little nature to be embodied will be bent 
towards sadness and lassitude of spirit, and its 
physical reflection will be nervous weakness. 
If the mother is in any bondage of fear, 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 141 

or in a distasteful locality, restricted action 
of bowels or of the lungs of her offspring it 
will be the task of the later-day healer to 
eradicate. Balsam and physic may reach the 
effect of this prenatal thought, but never the 
cause. Treatment in such cases should be 
directed to the mother's thought : argue men- 
tally that she never was in bondage, for she 
never was in any sense her body ; her spirit 
was always as free as the wind that bloweth 
where it listeth, was able to escape its false 
fetters at any time, and enjoy the perfect 
freedom of the soul. It was a mistaken 
thought, an error that casts an illusive appear- 
ance as mistaken as itself. The seeming 
condition of the patient has no existence in 
reality ; he should and will, henceforth, reflect 
only the perfect thought of God, in whom 
he has his real being, independent of mortal 
birth. Deny the prenatal idea in toto. Help 
the patient to build up a finer inheritance for 
future expression, one that will not again 



I42 A LOOK UPWARD 

bring him, by the potent law of attraction, 
into conditions of unfavorable parentage. 

Restricted physical action is often induced 
by one's occupation, if it be one of close 
confinement, a steady tread-mill round, day 
after day, of devotion to labor, however 
honorable, that leaves little time for the 
necessary moments of spiritual upliftment, of 
communion with one's own soul reservoir of 
freshness and perennial power. Treat, here, 
to create an increased appetite and longing 
for the true bread of life, without which satis- 
faction and true freedom are impossibl 

Another thought that follows steady applica- 
tion is the common error that one's eyes must 
necessarily resent taxation and faiL The 
devotee to study or business is so fearful his 
S will suffer diminution of their pristine 
vigor, that he already sees himself with failing 
sight and inflamed lids, and, by the law of 
expectation and persistent mental treatment 
on this line, he really hastens and precipitates 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 143 

that condition, for there is no more powerful 
promoter of inflammation than thought. The 
fallacy here consists in the idea that there is 
just so much strength portioned out to the 
physical organ to use through life, and that 
haste makes waste. If this were true we 
should be blind through eternity, when these 
eyeballs become a handful of dust. On the 
contrary, practice makes perfect. Strength 
comes 7c'//// use. Do the muscles of the black- 
smith's arm shrink and fail from steady swing 
of his iron hammer ? Which is stronger, the 
wing of the bird^ who, with mighty strokes, 
ploughs his course through league after league 
of space, or that of the birdling whose fresh 
pinions have never been so severely taxed ? 
If, on a physical plane of reasoning, we believe 
the molecules of the body are constantly 
changing, why cannot we perpetually have a 
new organ, constantly vitalized by the spirit, 
which is alone the source of life, of sight, and 
of power ? Treatment for the eye and ear 



144 



A LOOK UPWARD 



should always be, first, an effort to cure the 
spiritual blindness of the patient by reminding 
him, both silently and by argument, that it 
is always the spirit which sees and hears. It 
stands at its outer portals to catch the mes- 
sages from the externa] plane. It breathes 
forth this instrument for its temporary use ; 
with increased power and knowledge, it can 
breathe out or express its creative impulse in 
a fresher, stronger organ. Fight down the 
fear and belief of failing powers that might 
induce an imperfect condition. Hours of i 

for these valuable servants are n< ry, and 

should be regarded The spirit grows w( 

of controlling too long ill one direction. 
Change is rest to the spirit, a change of 
action and direction. 

The world is psychologized by another belief 
that it must grow old, and that at a certain age 
energies will fail, faculties grow imperfect, I 
and ears will be so pass/, these organs that are 
constantly being made over new, that artificial 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 145 

aids to sight and hearing are necessary ; that 
canes must support enfeebled limbs, whose 
motion the spirit alone makes possible even 
in the vigor of youth. Why to-morrow more 
than to-day, or next year than now, if our 
spirits drink perennially from the fountain of 
eternal youth, if we can daily, hourly renew 
our powers ? We faithfully copy our ideals, 
or are swayed by the world's opinion. We 
expect that increasing years will bring decay 
rather than ripeness, and our law of expectancy 
is fulfilled. There is a beautiful form of so- 
called old age, which is less a decay than a 
withdrawal. The soul, having expressed itself 
on the mundane plane to the extent of its 
desire or necessity, gradually transfers its 
capacities and powers, its desires and interests, 
to the next higher step in the eternal stairway, 
cutting, one by one, the links of the material 
chain that would detain it from the exercise 
of its fullest liberty and growth. 

We should always remember, not alone in 



146 A LOOK UPWARD 

the exceptional periods of upliftment, but in the 

ordinary daily task, even though it seem often 
akin to drudgery, that the Holy Pres . the 

Shekinah, dwells within us, and, like Lazarus 
in the tomb, only awaits the call "Come forth," 
to arise, though bound in the habiliments 
this clay, and demonstrate its absolute suprem- 
acy. Shall material thought forever bear s* 
It doth not yet appear what we shall be, 

we grow to find our souls, and appropriate 

more and more of the divinity which is our 
own, as w h and grasp of the infinitude 

of deific Love and Wisdom which awaits our 
ion, and of which physical healing is 
among the least of its possibilities and -its 
proph< 

The last enemy which shall be destroyed is 
Death. Sickness, dis and materiality of 

thought — heretofore giant foes of the human 
race — arc being overcome, are already van- 
quished by some. Their long potent reign is 
due to the world's belief in their reality and 



SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 147 

the necessity of their continuance. May it 
not be thus psychologized by the belief that 
death is a necessity, accepting it as it has 
sickness, dreading it, fearing it, or courting it, 
clothing it with imaginary terrors, regarding 
it as the grand finale of all enjoyable 
experience ? Concerning the sphere beyond, 
little natural thought is expended or any 
sensible theory held. Vague supernatural 
beliefs abound of white robes and golden 
harps and eternal rest, that worst purgatory 
to an active, restless spirit which ingenuity 
could devise. 

All these errors, with many more, spring 
from that attitude of mind which regards 
man as his body, losing which, he is dead, a 
material cognizance that cannot realize the 
true spiritual life, above and entirely inde- 
pendent of manifested form. Jesus, after his 
crucifixion, assumed material form at will, and 
fashioned it to look like or unlike his old 
self, so that Mary Magdalene did not at first 



148 A LOOK UPWARD 

recognize him, neither did the two disciples 
on the road to Emmaus, from whose sight 
he suddenly vanished, or, while remaining, 
perhaps, in spirit, loosed his hold on the 
material elements which he had gathered 
temporarily for his use from that space, in 
which in solution must exist all the phys 
properties which support our material forms. 
It was the inner spiritual recognition which 
he sought to awaken. 

Is it too much to hope that the world's 
children sometime (when the unborn fill our 
places) may conquer the last enemy which 
Paul intimates will be d< d — Death ; 

that with tl OWth of the spirit and its 

finer expression, they will refine and sublimate 
all material ultimates of expression, will gr 
the body or loose their hold upon it at pl< 
ure ; that the process of transition will be 
subtle and gradual, by the replacing of physi- 
cal atoms with spiritual ones, until there will 
be nothing left to bury ? There will be no 






SUGGESTIONS CONTINUED 149 

more death. The form can be shed, or 
assumed, according to the sphere wherein the 
next duty bids the spirit work, itself unaf- 
fected thereby. To death there will be no 
sting, to the grave no victory. 



15O A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER XII 

FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 

"Where two or three arc gathered together 

in my name, there am I in the midst of them." 
This was the Master's promise. Blessed 
companionship! And if one spirit guest, why 
not another, and many? Why deny compan- 
ionship and intelligent association to all save 
the flesh-embodied alone, if " all is mind, and 
there is no matter"? All life is one, all 
expression of mind or spirit one, clothed or 
unclothed. All that knows and lows and 
thinks and manifests is of the soul, and admits 
no barrier to its spiritual intercom 

The healer is frequently asked, " Do you 
recognize angelic assistance in your work?" 
Few metaphysicians admit the possibility of 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 151 

such aid (though, it would seem, inconsistently), 
while others hesitate to acknowledge it, lest 
they be ranked with those who submit them- 
selves as blind tools in the hands of half-under- 
stood powers, no more intelligent, perhaps, than 
themselves. 

"He maketh His angels messengers, and 
His ministers a flaming fire." Now, if the 
healer has grown to that plane where such 
high co-operation is possible, why should he not 
receive such assistance as well as accept it in 
other lines of work, on physical levels ? Intelli- 
gence can be transmitted, assistance rendered 
on three different planes, the lowest or material, 
the psychic or realm of mind (and when growth 
in conscious realization of spirit permits), on 
the purely spiritual plane. Every worker of 
any rank, if laboring unselfishly for the 
advancement of the race and the education of 
humanity, receives the co-operation (whether 
consciously or unconsciously) of all minds 
everywhere, both embodied and disembodied, 



152 A LOOK UPWARD 

who are interested in the same altruistic cause. 
Thought is a powerful magnet. The law of 
affinity, like attracting its correspondence, oper- 
ates nowhere more potently than on the 
psychic plane. Groups of kindred souls move 
together toward any grand result, each a 
connecting link in the encircling bond of 
Divine Love, all living the one life of the spirit, 
even though differently clothed. A few of the 
workers are exiled temporarily from clear, 
unclouded vision, from the exercise of fullest 
freedom, because of the great need of their 
brothers and sisters, still more darkly en- 
shrouded, wearing far more galling fetters. So, 
while the few volunteer to descend into the 
murk, and toil and sing their songs of cli 
to the oppressed and heavy-laden, these brave- 
hearted workers feel (or should feel) the 
helpful companionship of those left behind, of 
"the great cloud of witnesses sent forth to 
minister" to the heirs of salvation, and to 
those who are endeavoring to bring a perfect 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 153 

salvation to the race ; they fellowship the 
angels, "who are given charge concerning 
them." 

And why should there be any reluctance in 
making such grateful acknowledgment ? In 
union there is strength. Spirit is the only 
worker, when using the senseless body as its 
instrument. Does it stop working after shak- 
ing itself free from the clog ? It is through 
the mind that a healing treatment is trans- 
mitted. Cannot minds unclothed with clay 
treat as effectually ? No more so, it is true, 
since dropping the mortal form adds for the 
time not an inch to the mental or spiritual 
stature of the soul, contributes nothing of 
growth or of knowledge ; but by aspiration and 
noble motive we can, while embodied, attract 
to our atmosphere, or enter the realm of 
advanced, illuminated minds from supernal 
spheres of intelligence and power. Our work 
is wholly and completely our own. No other 
soul, angelic or archangelic, can become a 



154 A LOOK UPWARD 

substitute in our stead for the duty we only can 
accomplish. Helpful suggestions such might 
give, exactly as would an earthly confidant or 
adviser, and as naturally. Super-sensuous such 
promptings doubtless are, not super-natural ; 
co-operative, never co-ercive. 

A false theology has too long preserved an 
impassable barrier between the world of spirit 
and the world of matter, which impinge as 
closely upon each other as the shadow alw 
follows upon the substance which casts it. The 
walls of that barrier have crumbled into ruins. 
There is constant intereh between the 

seen and the unseen, two planes of the same 
world of absolute spirit ; and the Science which 
refuses to recognize this fact of the universality 
of soul, the metaphysician who ignores the daily 
presence of our brothers and sisters, like as we 
are except these bonds, has not been brave 
enough to declare the whole truth ; has not 
wholly outgrown the bondage of prejudice, or 
fears lest he be classed, by such avowal, 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 155 

with adherents of another faith, or with those 
media (rapidly growing few) who delegate all 
power to spirits, who are prone to forget the 
spiritual injunction to try the spirits, blindly 
accepting anything proceeding from a super- 
mundane source, an attitude of mind which is 
not conducive to the highest self-culture. The 
avenue to Truth lies through one's own soul ; 
we cannot take its message second-handed. 
We do not wish to sing with Sankey, " O to be 
nothing, nothing," but strive to be something 
within ourselves ; to be grand, noble, self-for- 
getting spirits, here and now, living a spiritual 
life to-day of great beauty, purity, and all 
blessed ministration, becoming one with that 
beneficent life-giving stream which flows from 
the heart of the Infinite. 

It is only the pure in heart who can at all 
times choose their spiritual companionship, 
encompassed as we are by such a seething mass 
of spirit life. For as Nature abhors a vacuum, 
so the vital power which we call God fills all 



156 A LOOK UPWARD 

space with its superabundant life. It omits no 
possibility of expression, it crowds life upon 
life, builds upon the tree and plant and leaf, 
already filled to bursting with their draught of 
the divine elixir, colonies of intelligent insect 
activity, while it fills each drop of water with a 
teeming, swarming mass of living creatures. 
Life is the one overflowing energy, the all- 
pervading principle. No realm is stagnant ; no 
nook escapes its penetrating power. Shall then 
the air alone be tcnantless ; and what form of 
life hovers there ? 

As the late Lord Lytton has so eloquently 
said: " Reasoning t lien, by evident analog}-, if 
not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no 
than yonder star, a habitable and breathing 
world . . . common sense (if our schoolmen 
had it) would suffice to teach that the circum- 
fluent infinite which we call space, the 
boundless impalpable, which divides the earth 
from the moon and stars, is filled also with its 
correspondent and appropriate life. Is it not 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 157 

a visible absurdity to suppose that being is 
crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from 
the immensities of space ? The law of the 
Great System forbids the waste of even an 
atom, it knows no spot where something of life 
does not breathe. Well, then can you conceive 
that space, which is the infinite itself, is alone 
a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the 
one design of universal being than the peopled 
leaf, than the swarming globule ? The micro- 
scope shows you creatures on the leaf ; no 
mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the 
nobler and more gifted things that hover in the 
illimitable air. Yet between these last dwellers 
of the threshold and man is a mysterious and 
terrible affinity." 

Nay, not "mysterious" to the quickened 
vision, nor should the "affinity" be "terrible;" 
indeed, it never can be to the enlightened mind. 
It is when this affinity is close and unintelligent 
that obsession occurs ; and cases of obsession 
are as frequently met in our practice in the 



158 A LOOK UPWARD 

nineteenth century as when Jesus walked these 
earthly paths and himself released such bond- 
age, as he did, more than any other form of 
error and weakness. Ignorance on this impor- 
tant matter is so dense that even the fact of 
spirit possession is ignored, or discussed only 
with ridicule. Yet history offers many well- 
authenticated instances of wholesale obsession 
besides that of the Salem witchcraft, where not 
only individuals but whole communities have 
been seized and controlled by a lower order of 
these dwellers on the threshold of conscious 
existence — princes of darkness and powers of 
the air. 

Every mind seeks its own level, and attracts 
to it the companionship to which it h \vn. 

The atmosphere of our thought-life brings us 
into closest relation with similar strata of 
thought. A cheerful mind meets sunshine 
everywhere, and genial intelligences gravitate 
naturally to such environment, while a gloomy, 
despondent spirit is a magnet to attract 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 159 

saddened, depressed souls ; for such there are 
in realms we call immortal. All ranks and 
conditions of spirits go out of mortal existence, 
and they do not become suddenly glorified, they 
are not made omnipotent or omniscient by the 
transition. A drunkard does not immediately 
outgrow the longing for his degrading cup. 
There is no affinity as yet between his lower 
animal soul and purer states of existence. The 
law of gravitation — the potent attraction of 
like for like — brings him again to the old 
familiar haunts ; and if he finds there a mortal 
whose atmosphere is sufficiently negative for 
him to enter and mingle therewith, he psychol- 
ogizes that brain to act as he shall will, to crave 
the liquor which shall renew in that spirit's 
consciousness (so close is his control of that 
mortal organism) the old base gratification. 
Many times have clear seers, with opened vision, 
beheld such half-crazed spirit beside a young 
man who poises the glass in his hand, not 
caring for it overmuch, yet feeling impelled to 



l6o . A LOOK UPWARD 

quaff the draught, he knows not why, the brain 
so handicapped by this evil obsession that it 
holds no memory of the old promises and the 
brave resolves to abstain from such indulgence. 
The only cure for this unfortunate victim is to 
cut the fetter that anchors the disembodied 
spirit to earth, to help it to grow, quicken in it 
a desire to develop that one spark of divinity 
which has slumbered too long; and wise, help- 
ful co-workers from the other side, invisible to 
him as yet, will help the weakling onward, but 
the first suggestion must be made, the first 
treatment given from the mortal plane to which 
he is nearest. Surround the embodied patient 
also with a positive atmosphere, cultivate in him 
that spiritual strength and equipoise which will 
effectually protect him from becoming a prey to 
those wandering, vagrant, undeveloped souls. 

But all obsessions are not of this nature, or 
in these ranks of life. There are kind, loving 
possessions, all the closer because loving, and 
thereby no more intelligent. Love is proverbi- 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED l6l 

ally blind. A recent case could be cited of a 
young lady who seemed in rapid decline. 
There had been serious attacks of hemorrhage, 
a severe cough, with loss of strength and 
appetite. Inquiry elicited the fact that her 
mother had died in consumption about two 
years before. The course of treatment, aided 
by strong impression, was thus made plain and 
clear. Still faithful in affection, she sought her 
child's dear society, but, on blending again with 
mundane environments, the power of associa- 
tion unconsciously renewed in her thought the 
memory of her former sufferings, just as the 
same law will recall to our minds, while still 
embodied, feelings of joy or sorrow experienced' 
in certain localities, whenever we revisit them, 
and this mental image was reflected in the 
organism of her child. The patient also 
thought most of the risen parent as she had 
last seen her, pale and wan, and coughing 
incessantly. Each soul had to be awakened 
from its dream, and the unreality of this false 



l62 A LOOK UPWARD 

image and its reflection was demonstrated. 
What could cod-liver oil and other pulmonary 
remedies, in good and regular standing, accom- 
plish here ? In four treatments the cough had 
ceased, there was every sign of returning 
health, and the patient voluntarily renounced 
all further need of aid. 

Spirits still have needs when freed from the 
flesh, and it should be the acknowledged duty 
of spiritual workers to minister to these " spirits 
in prison," as did the Master. In such cases, 
however, no command to the spirit to depart 
should ever be administered, for if the spirit (as 
is likely) retains one spark of human obstin; 
its persistence in remaining would be increased. 
Entreaty is better, gentle argument more 
advisable. Reason with the spirit, kindly and 
sensibly, open its ryes to its mistaken position, 
educate it exactly as if it were still incased in 
flesh, wait for it to choose between the possi- 
bility of progression, or of remaining longer 
fettered. And that spirit will one day return 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 163 

from the heights it has won to thank and bless 
you for its complete enfranchisement. Attune 
your ears to catch its message. 

There are states of semi-existence, half- 
formed, embryotic spiritual monads, who 
dominate the elements ; and certainly, only 
such as these would Jesus have sent into a 
herd of swine. A passionate nature might 
attract to its atmosphere the elves of fire ; a 
materialistic, grovelling soul might fellowship 
the gnomes of earth whose tendency would be 
to drag their half-willing prey still farther 
downward. If such obsession were met, an 
opposite treatment would be necessary ; argu- 
ment, entreaty, or reason would be thrown 
away, but an intelligent, imperative command 
to depart, from a superior being, is always 
recognized by an inferior order of existence, 
as the animal kingdom always recognizes the 
dominion of man — the topmost blossom on 
evolution's mighty tree. 

Healers should treat every susceptible 



164 A LOOK UPWARD 

person towards the realization of at-one-ment 
with the Great Spirit, the only Intelligence. 
Elevate the patient's plane of consciousn 
Build a wall around him spiritually which 
nothing can cross over, that will protect him 
as effectually as did the Israelites' pillar of 
cloud by clay, and of fire by night. Let this 
bulwark of defence be open only upward — 
Godward — till the embodied spirit grows so 
strong in its aspiration as to educate and 
carry along in its mighty current every other 
spirit, bond or free, that contacts its atmos- 
phere. Let each soul grow strong in itself, 
and rely on its own power to grasp more 
wisdom and of light. There is no aristocracy 
of spirit, with embodiment as its line 
demarcation. Growth alone marks spiritual 
levels. It is possible for us to reach a higher 
plane while still ensphered on earth, than many 
spirits occupy who are no longer clothed upon 
with flesh. We are all spirits together, em- 
bodied or disembodied ; we climb together, 



FACTS SELDOM RECOGNIZED 1 65 

side by side. Differing opportunities come to 
each, but each comes to all in time, for the 
same divine germ dwells in every breast, the 
dews of heaven, the sun of an all-pervading 
Love warms and enriches every heart alike. 
According to our receptivity, it is given unto 
us. Let our growth be so strong and healthy 
that we shall afford no shelter to infesting 
grub or clinging parasite. 



1 66 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER XIII 

WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 

To one who notes the tentative fashion with 
which minds of every grade lightly essay the 
difficult task of becoming metaphysical heal 
as if this high calling, this sacred duty of 
striking off material fetters and opening prison 
doors, were an easy, graceful office, something 
that can be learned in a fortnight like a ; 

of legerdemain, or a trade whose artisans are 

in good demand, the query naturally aris 
"'What are the qualifications lor worthy and 
noble service in this difficult field?' 1 And 
at once from that treasure-house of suggestion, 
precept, and counsel comes the answer we 
crave: "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven 
and its righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you." 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 167 

Now, where did Christ bid us look for the 
kingdom of heaven but within us ? Then we 
should enlarge and broaden the boundaries of 
that kingdom, enrich its revenues, defend it 
stanchlv from foes within and enemies with- 
out, fill its coffers with supplies that will 
exceed any demand upon its resources, before 
we begin to feed the hungry and clothe the 
naked. In short, we must make all we can 
of No. 1 before we can feed and quicken 
the soul of No. 2. It is our first duty, one 
intrusted to our especial care ; if we do not 
attend to it, none other will. Each individual, 
bv the care or the carelessness with which he 
treats his own soul, increases thereby the 
sum total of human weal or woe. Not that 
No. 2 drinks his supply from the soul of No. 
1. He is also a ray from the Central Sun, 
but the wise instructor always learns to read 
before teaching the alphabet to beginners ; 
the conscientious healer has tested the sus- 
taining power of this truth, has felt the 



1 68 A LOOK UPWARD 

growth of divine powers before awakening 
such possibilities in the heart of the neophyte. 
Maturity of thought is necessary, though 
this need not imply maturity of years, as the 
reservoir of knowledge and power has ofl 
been accumulated in some past expression of 
the soul. What did Jesus mean when he 
placed a little child in the midst, and said : 
" Except ye become as a little child, ye cannot 
enter the kingdom of heaven"? Eliminating 
from the mind the old idea that the creation 
of a fresh form necessitates the beginning of 
a new soul — a soul that is immortal both 
ways, without beginning as well as without 
end — this "little child' is revealed to us as 
the product of many mortal births, and with 
all its store of varied experience, acquired 
treasure and power, in being given a fresh 
opportunity, stands much in the position of 
the angel, who, having outgrown all lower 
embodiments, keeps the reminiscence of them. 
We all recognize on the face of the babe the 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 169 

expression of wonderment as to how he got 
here, a place he does not wholly like, the 
endeavor to reconcile present conditions and 
environments with the real life he has just 
left, before the plunge in Lethean waters so 
strangely effaced them from his mental record. 
The slate is clean now for a fresh inscription, 
though the old blurred lines sometimes show 
faintly through ; but before the babe can 
speak to tell what he knows and dimly 
remembers, the picture has faded, as does a 
dream, which we often vainly reach out 
farther and farther to grasp, as we feel our- 
selves awakening to the mortal plane of 
consciousness. Acclimation to these terres- 
trial scenes, and the accumulation of external 
knowledge, crowd out reminiscence of former 
experiences. The cultivation of the intellect 
does not foster the unfoldment of the intuition. 
The soul, like the Roman's god Janus, god 
of the year and of the past, which had two 
faces, one turned toward peace, the other 



I JO A LOOK UPWARD 

toward war, looks through the intellect out 
on to the plane of existence, while it looks 
through the intuition within, where the king- 
dom of heaven is, the realm of true be 
If we cannot enter tlv? kingdom of heaven 
except by becoming guileless and receptive 
like a little child, then we must cultivate the 
intuition which remembers the path by which 
we have travelled, must renew ous 

connection with that divine soul of which 
we now represent only a part. 

And yet no premium is to be placed upon 
human ignorance, nor can intellectual training 
and culture be regarded as unnecessary for a 
spiritual healer. Shakespeare says truly: "The 

one sin of the world is the sin of ignoran 
There are metaphysicians who limit their 
library to works on Christian Science. A 
danger signal should be hoisted over the 
doors of such libraries. The mind constantly 
biassed in one direction, like the bow always 
strung, loses force, snap, and a true poise or 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 1 71 

aim. The mechanic brings fresh powers to 
his work each clay because of the moments 
of recreation which have intervened, in which 
he has forgotten his work. Above all other 
workers, the healer should avoid becoming 
narrow, should refuse to cherish or allow a 
limited range of vision. There is a temptation 
which often comes with the first exuberant 
fealty to the new Truth, to see nothing, read 
nothing, talk nothing else. The life which 
seems to have been wasted hitherto must 
make haste to grow ; the new literature is 
most entrancing, absorbing ; we must devour 
it all. The current events of life lose their 
interest, the different moves of the knights 
and kings on the vast chessboard of empires 
and republics lose their weighty significance, 
and so this tracing of the finger of God is 
lost to us. If Divine Providence can hold all 
in the hollow of Its hand, can we, who strive 
to become one with It, scorn any of these 
interests ? We may be soon called to some 



172 A LOOK UPWARD 

patient whose entire range of thought begins 
and ends here. How shall we turn his mind 
into new channels unless we can stand with 
him long enough to take him by the hand and 
lead him into broader paths ? He will walk 
with us more readily than if we call to him 
from a too rigid adherence to our own plane ; 
we shall win his confidence, his liking and 
respect by a comradely in what he regards as 
a common-sense plane; to him we are not the 
crank he thought us, or might deem us, it" we 
gave him nothing but Science, if we unwisely 
tried to feed babes with meat. Then, when 
our turn comes to talk, he is in duty bound 
jive us a fair hearing. Verily, we must be 
all things to all men, if we would gain even 
some. We must not grow one-sided but all- 
sided ; in every direction, enter all avenues, 
store the mind full of every pure interest, 
keep our ears open on car or street to catch 
the trend of conversation, the status of 
the world's interest, often gleaning thereby 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 1 73 

valuable metaphysical suggestion and illus- 
tration. 

The healer should also snatch time (alas, that 
even the brief draught from such refreshing 
fountain should be almost crowded out) to 
gratify the cravings of his soul for art and 
music, that it grow not too weary and homesick 
for the language of its native ether, or become 
dwarfed and stunted, missing this stimulus. A 
moment of discouragement can often be entirely 
effaced by pausing at an art store to study, or 
even glance at, some beautiful ideal of color, 
harmony, and poetical conception — the pure 
message of truth that has come to some other 
soul. True eyes see truth everywhere, quick- 
ened ears catch it on every breeze, or in the 
sons: with which Music "washes from the soul 
the dust of e very-day life." Not trifles these; 
far from it. We will carry richer force to our 
next duty by such wayside inspiration. For a 
brief while of every day we should forget we 
are metaphysicians. Relax the tension, change 



174 A LOOK UPWARD 

the direction of thought, that thought may 
grow stronger, our work receive a grander, 
loftier power. By all means, O healers ! store 
your libraries of heart and mind with something 
besides that pearl of great price — metaphysical 
truth. Be the nautilus, with its many far- 
reaching tentacles, that secretes its pearls in all 
waters. Strive for the broad rowth, be the 

grandest, deepest, merriest, sunniest expression 
of life in all thinking. 

If there are those who have enjoyed as yet 
but meagre opportunities for intellectual culture, 
let them remember that healing in its higl 
demonstration is a spiritual rather than a 
mental power. It was the ir, we recall, 

who taught the great preacher, Tauler, "wisdom 
the weary schoolmen never knew." An illiter- 
ate person often "ti the treatment, 
appropriates the truth as his own, quicker than 
the most erudite scholar. There are in such 
patients no preconceived opinions to overthrow. 
There is simple trust, a wealth of kind-hearted- 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 175 

ness and gratitude, all betokening an unfold- 
ment of the spiritual nature, which forms a 
clear, lucid mirror on which the faintest 
breathing of the Great Spirit leaves its impress. 
It would perhaps be possible for this illiterate 
person to become a healer of great power, 
inasmuch as a generous, self-sacrificing eager- 
ness to relieve suffering, to do a kind act to 
another, forms the clearest, most transparent 
atmosphere through which the Light can shine. 
Such a spirit is a qualification for healing, it 
confers a degree that no college can ever grant, 
for the truths of the soul are not apprehended 
by the intellect ; and yet no information can be 
too varied, no intelligence too diverse to enlarge 
our usefulness for this work. To be manifesta- 
tions of God, we must be many-sided, not alone 
in our knowledge of the Truth, but in 
assimilation and demonstration of its spiritual 
power. Buddha, we remember, in reviewing 
every link in his chain of existence as it was 
forged, found in that moment of divine revela- 



\j6 A LOOK UPWARD 

tion, that everything which had advanced him, 
or prepared him to be an Avatar, was the good 
he had done, and not the intellectual position 
he had attained. 

There is a beautiful compensation in working 
for others. While the true worker bends from 
the plane of utter self-abnegation, surrenders 
all thought of self and self-interests, he therein 
most truly, rapidly advances his highest divii 
self-hood. He that loses his life shall find it, 
while he who strives to save and enrich his soul 
by selfish care for it alone will, undoubtedly, 
dwarf, if not lose, the same. Work for God and 
for others is eternal. Its lines are ineffaceable. 
The selfish man loses the prize he seeks, or 
discovers the empty worthlessness of its 
acquisition. It fades in his grasp. Pleasure- 
seekers never find the happiness which comes 
to those who in hard work for others forget all 
about it, they cannot know the pure joy of self- 
sacrifice. " Verily, what shall it profit a man to 
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 177 

Next to a deeply spiritual nature, a thorough 
understanding and apprehension of the Truth, 
a heart aglow with the love of human kindness, 
perhaps the best qualification for a healer is 
that supreme gift known as tact, the fruitage of 
a rare intuitional culture. It comes with 
growth, it also comes with an implicit trust 
in, and consciousness of being led, guided, and 
directed by, the Infinite Wisdom. Lose the viy- 
ness, the sense of responsibility. The work is 
God's, not ours alone. It shall be given us in 
every hour what we shall speak and what we 
must do, if we place our hand trustingly in His 
to be led. Give no place to distrust. The 
Truth will stand without the prop of our 
anxiety. To sow the seed is all we can do ; 
He will look after the harvest. " Cast all your 
care on God ; that anchor holds." 

Let the timid healer boldly enter the arena 
of conflict, and deal valiant blows at error, 
regardless of this or that personality now under 
its sway, and in fighting others' battles he will 



178 A LOOK UPWARD 

soon find he has none of his own left to wage. 
His selfness is lost in the Supreme Self. By 
holding others up to a perfect ideal, imperfec- 
tion loses its hold upon his personal perception, 
he grows to mirror the divine perfection, he 
forgets whether he is growing or not, if only 
Christ's lambs are fed. The highest advance- 
ment, the strongest growth is always gained 
through self-forgetfulness. There is no immor- 
tality in self-aggrandizement. Only good is 
eternal, not a good that is accreted and 
niggardly hoarded, but a good that is poured 
out for others, that is lavished in the light and 
joy, comfort and liberty of those who are 
ministered unto. To him who hath this good, 
shall be given more abundantly. 

Speak boldly the Truth you now hold, 
knowing the light of to-day will seem a dim 
twilight to-morrow compared with the grander 
revelation you have grown to receive. You 
have only touched your lips to the hem of 
Truth's wonderful garment, seen but a faint 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER 1 79 

glimmer of her radiant glory, translated but a 
line or two of her transcendent message. 
There is more and more to be given, not only 
through time but throughout eternity, a drawing 
nearer and still nearer to the Infinite Wisdom. 
Give pure truth, if in small doses, to those 
unprepared to receive more, but do not dilute, 
or approach the level of error if you are dumb. 
In the soul of your patient, as in your own, 
must first come the blade and the ear, before 
the full corn in the ear. The time of harvest is 
not yet. Fulfilling the conditions of growth, 
God cannot fail to give the increase. Open a 
spiritual correspondence with God. Feel your 
divine environment, and grow into a wider, 
higher one. What then can you fear from the 
environment of error into which you will be 
often called? You are the alkali to neutralize 
that acid, the touchstone to separate the grains 
of pure gold from the baser alloy. The gold 
is there. Eliminate in your thought the error 
from the patient, the sin from the sinner. 



ISO A LOOK UPWARD 

Hate only the former, but love the reflection 
of God's thought which the latter will soon 
wholly become. Sit by as the refiner would 
watch the process of transmutation, and you 
will be rewarded by a new revealing of the 
Infinite Love that will not let any perish but 
bring all to a knowledge of the Truth. The 
healer's work should be that of education in 
the science of spiritual health, instead of 
physical healing alone, which it necessarily 
includes. 

A sacred treasure is the life we bear, a life 
which calls for the most earnest con>ecration 
from the devotee of Truth in any form, but 
especially must the spiritual healer exemplify 
in his daily walk and work the truths of the 
spirit. He or she must grow beyond the 
possibility of passion, anger, or pride, else how 
can they quell these errors in another ? If the 
healer has a vulnerable point, the enemy will 
surely find it. If still a victim of fear, how 
help another to that perfect trust which knows 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER iSl 

no shadow of trembling ? If easily provoked, 
impatient under rebuke, how lead a weaker 
brother to the charity which suffers long and 
is always kind ? If jealous, how point to the 
Universal Love ? We must outgrow personal- 
ity. If another healer perchance carries a 
case upon whom our own earnest effort had 
somehow failed to produce the desired effect, 
what matters it which particular piece of the 
whole lump, what name this or that part of 
God bore ? It is GocCs Truth that invariably 
triumphs, and we, its torch-bearers, losing all 
selfness, rejoice heartily together, and are 
exceeding glad. 

The ideal, though high, should also be made 
most rigidly practical. Even fans ought to be 
no longer the possession of the true metaphy- 
sician, for if we so descend to the level of 
sensation as to let the enemy enter in the 
shape of heat, how are we going to expel him 
from another in the form of pain ? There is 
nothing easier than to invoke a cooling thought, 



1 82 A LOOK UPWARD 

to stand in mind beside the sea, or to raise the 
consciousness to a plane above and beyond a 
distressing bondage to physical conditions. 

The conscientious healer has not his own 
reputation alone at stake, but the good credit 
of this new demonstration of Truth which he 
bears before a critical world, who scans the 
reason for the faith that is in him. It is what 
the Truth, or God, is to us that we healers must 
exemplify. " God, the only reality; Spirit, the 
only substance; Love, the fulfilling of the 
Law." 

What constitutes a healer? How docs Paul 
tell us " in all things to approve ourselves 
the ministers of God " ? " In much patience, 
in afflictions and in distresses, in stripes, in 
imprisonment " (the world has grown some 
since Paul's day, and the apostles of a newer 
dispensation are not now physically stretched 
upon the rack or burned at the stake, but 
there are enough mental persecutions and os- 
tracisms), " in labors, watchings, and fastings. 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A HEALER I S3 

By pureness" (the purest life in thought, word, 
or deed that can be possibly lived), "by 
knowledge " (the broadest culture in every 
field), "by long-suffering, by kindness" (the 
kind, the soft answer to the hard words which 
error will certainly fling back at the Truth), 
"by the Holy Ghost" (the spirit of the dove 
brooding ever in the heart), " by love un- 
feigned, by the word of Truth " (and noth- 
ing but the highest Truth whose conception 
we have yet reached), " by the power of 
God" (the only power), "by the armor of 
righteousness on the right hand and on the 
left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report 
and good report" (plenty of either), "known 
as deceivers" (and yet in our heart of hearts 
true as God). "As unknown, and yet well 
known; as dying, and behold we live" (dying 
daily, to the lower nature and propensities, 
resurrected constantly to newness of life) ; "as 
chastened, and not killed. As sorrowful, yet 
alway rejoicing ; as poor, yet making many 



1 84 A LOOK UPWARD 

rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all 
things." 

The possibilities of the future it hath not 
yet entered our hearts to conceive. The 
heights that we see dimly outlined before us 
are enough for our lesson of to-day. For the 
immediate present, " the world is our country, 
to do good our religion ; " but it is ever 
beyond, up higher and higher paths that 
the pure banner of Truth is borne, which, 
waving in the white sunlight of heaven, ch< 
our hearts, and nerves our energies to mount 
nearer and vet nearer to the summit of all 
soul-infoldment and achievement, and on that 
banner we read — Excelsior I 



GIFTS OF HEALING 185 



CHAPTER XIV 



GIFTS OF HEALING 



Can all spiritually minded students of 
Spiritual Science become equally successful 
healers ? Do all who enter the field of 
practice demonstrate the Truth with equal 
power? Certainly not. The "same spirit" 
of charity and good-will expresses itself in 
" a diversity of gifts." There are gifts of 
healing, as there are gifts of music, of art, 
and of oratory. 

This does not imply that God is any 
respecter of persons, or that He endows any 
one of His children above any other. Each 
soul, made in His image and likeness, holds 
every good and perfect gift in its germ, and 
none of these gifts can possibly fail of ripest 



1 86 A LOOK UPWARD 

unfoldment and development, somewhere, 
sometime. But all gifts do not alike reach 
their ripe fulfilment in one embodiment, 
unless in cases of advanced incarnations, like 
that of Michael Angelo, who could be poet, 
architect, artist, and sculptor, all at once. 
Genius is the culmination of previous growth, 
the result of diligent application in some 
former experience, the seed-fruitage of many 
flowers of existence. 

Therefore it happens that some who are 
called to heal in this present time have devel- 
oped that one particular gift in a marked 
degree ; this is the hour for its expression. 
Therefore like a trained workman, who skil- 
fully wields the tools of his trade or art, they 
potently divide the words of Truth, having 
grown to a conscious conviction of the Omnip- 
otence of the Force with which they deal, 
and of which they are a demonstration. To 
question such a one, who has made his calling 
and election sure, regarding his possible sue- 



GIFTS OF HEALING 187 

cess in any case, would be to him equivalent 
with the query : " Is God dead ? " If one 
with the infinite all-pervading Life, the abiding 
Presence, what room can there be for failure? 
How is impotence possible ? 

Yet let no students be deterred from engag- 
ing in metaphysical work from the fear that 
the healing gift is not theirs. It never will 
be until it is cultivated by individual effort. 
Each soul must work out its own salvation, 
and grow into the completeness of the Divine 
Likeness. Sweep aw r ay the world's debris and 
rubbish which cover the latent germ, nourish 
and quicken it into action by earnest effort 
and endeavor. Healing in its last degree is 
always education. To surround one's self with 
a truth-loving atmosphere, to live out one's 
conviction in daily expression, radiates a healing 
influence as potently sensed as is the fragrance 
of a bouquet of flowers. Ought we not all 
breathe forth this pure emanation of soul- 
strength constantly, remain encompassed by 



1 88 A LOOK UPWARD 

it, as is the planet with the surrounding 
ether? What a blessed thing to be able to 
make everybody better, stronger, happier, aglow 
with purer motive and nobler incentive, who 
come in contact with us, to carry healing 
even on the hem of our garments. And we 
all have this capacity to be a flower, giving 
forth rich perfume to friend and stranger alike. 
The sense-perception of the lower nature is no 
more keen to its surroundings than is the 
higher spiritual soul to respond to the thought 
emanations of those whom we meet or sit 
among. If we could sec with inner vision how 
the clear atmosphere of some lair morning is 

clouded by the smoke of our discontent, our 
undue ambition, unwillingness to serve, or 
material promptings, would we not all make 
stronger effort to keep our thought-atmosphere 
pure, and radiate thence only light and beauty 
and harmony? 

Some maintain that every successful healer 
is a psychic, or one whose psychic powers are 



GIFTS OF HEALING 189 

developed on the healing plane. This devel- 
opment again is possible for all. Media, or 
the transmitters of a message of light in any 
form, like poets, are "born, not made," but 
born thus because their apprenticeship has 
been served hitherto in some other school or 
workshop. A medium is simply a pane of 
glass through which the light shines and 
floods with radiance an otherwise dark apart- 
ment or condition. It is a gate between 
knowledge and ignorance, the spiritual and the 
temporal. How blessed, to be a window rather 
than a wall to shut out the light. Every one 
is a window to the limit of his growth or 
development, and through such clear trans- 
parent atmosphere the Truth is always most 
readily discerned, a healing tide transmitted. 

Jesus did not disdain to use psychic powers. 
Like him, though in a lesser degree, we too 
can tell when we are touched, or when virtue 
has gone out of us. There are those of us 
who could also have told the woman of Samaria 



1 90 A LOOK UPWARD 

how many husbands she had had, and many- 
events of her past life ; but Jesus did not stop 
there, as modern seers sometimes do. Ik- 
pointed to the living fountain of Life for 
which every soul should thirst, aroused that 
spiritual hunger which he could so masterfully 
awaken in her heart. Those individuals who 
are only psychics are often the prey of psycho- 
logical influence from other minds, are swayed 
hither and thither by every mental current. 
They are not masters of the plane on which 
they stand, until they have grown beyond it, 
have developed spiritual powers. From that 
altitude they can safely and skilfully use the 
psychic realm of being, and often with great 

advantage in the work of healing. 

The psychic plane is a reflector, like the 
clear surface of a placid lake, which reveals a 
nether world where every reflection is inverted 
as are spiritual realities on the lower plane of 
sense-perception, often revealing them with 
startling vividness through this limpid medium. 



GIFTS OF HEALING 191 

Similarly the healer who properly uses the 
psychic realm can often more readily detect, 
by its aid, the true spiritual cause of a patient's 
inverted physical condition. 

The matter of remuneration for healing and 
teaching is one that is frequently discussed, a 
favorite stone thrown at the apostles of the 
new dispensation being that, as Christ and his 
disciples made no charge for their services, 
neither should they ; that to receive compensa- 
tion for exercising a healing gift is debasing a 
spiritual power to the low level of the world's 
barter. The disciples of primitive days who 
gathered the people together on the mountain 
top, by the lake shore or in the open air, 
and broke, in their presence, the bread of Life, 
received no salary therefor, it is true ; but it 
is a well-acknowledged and universally accepted 
fact that ministers of the same pure gospel, in 
a different age, shall be paid for such ministry. 
Coal bills, grocers' and landlords' demands, are 
stubborn facts. Many of our metaphysical 



I Q2 A LOOK UPWARD 

workers have such demands to cancel, have 
often a family depending on them for food and 
raiment. If these workers devote all their 
time to service in this humanitarian field, what 
chance is there for wage-earning in business 
marts or in other lines of labor ? And, is it 
not better that they receive their support from 
those whom they serve, and upon whom they 
confer an inestimable benefit, than by those 
on whom they have less claim ? Justice 
demands such compensation. Every kind of 
laborer is worthy of his hire. 

The healer should have a care that his pure 
message be not tarnished with a mercenary 
taint. Watch warily against the entrance of 
this subtle foe. Freely have we received, 
freely should we give. No grief can await us 
on the other side of life, nay, in the real Life, 
so keen, perhaps, as the remembrance of a 
missed opportunity for doing good. Our mea- 
gre bank account will trouble us little then. 
But while keeping our charities bright and 



GIFTS OF HEALING 193 

shining, we should make no concession to that 
miserly spirit which we often meet, the penuri- 
ousness of the well-to-do ; in fact, when this 
spirit is met, the case will not yield until that 
thought is taken up; often the "case" is 
because of this. Often, also, for such patient 
to part with his dollar is the most salutary 
treatment that can be administered. Loosen 
the fettered heart, open its avenues into all 
freedom and generosity. Again, there are 
many patients who, having paid two or three 
dollars daily to a regular physician for two 
months, refuse to risk the expense of more 
than three metaphysical treatments because 
they "count up too fast," little realizing that, 
if their physical malady is not immediately 
removed, the first germ of spiritual conscious- 
ness, of a higher diviner growth, may thus be 
quickened and established, a boon which the 
world's baser wealth can never buy. 

God's treatments are worth as much and 
more than man's. It is a pearl beyond all 



194 A LOOK UPWARD 

price that this truth offers, apart from its 
promised freedom from physical bondage. 
Never take a patient (such request is often 
made) on the condition of no cure, no pay, and 
full payment on the return of health. Failure 
will then be inevitable. Health will never be 
restored through the atmosphere of doubt, and 
it is much better in treating those in poor 
circumstances to have a stated fee of fifty, 
twenty-five, or even ten cents (returning it in 
full, probably, at the end of the course), for 
it encourages in the patient a spirit of inde- 
pendence, and a sense of justice. People I 
more for what they pay for, and that which 
they secure gratis they usually grow to believe 
cannot be worth much, or it would not be 
given so freely. 

Charity has many avenues besides that of 
fref treatment. A business basis for service 
rendered, if the terms are reasonable, seems 
the most sensible and advisable. But the 
healer always remembers that he is working 






GIFTS OF HEALING 1 95 

for a day that will need him no longer, for the 
advancement of the race to a point where 
physical suffering will seem a nightmare of the 
past. 

The healer's path is not bestrewn very 
thickly with roses, or, if so, he often meets the 
briers and thorns first, but they are prophecies 
of bud and blossom, and if the flowers all droop 
on the other side of Life's garden wall, then 
he will find them there. 



196 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER XV 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 



When a patient has been healed of his 
physical infirmities by an understanding of 
the Truth, and begins to feel, as he will, the 
awakening of new interests, the quickening of 

new impulses and growth fill ideas, the stirring 
of higher aims and holier cravings to become 
all which he now sees it is his duty and 
privilege to attain, when the pattern of the 
Perfect Man is revealed to him as never before, 
and the possibility of cultivating his oneness 
with the Divine dawns upon his consciousness, 
the first appeal which this enfranchised one 
makes of his healer or teacher is, "I see it all, 
but how shall I get there, how apprehend the 
Truth as you seem to ; how can I develop 
spiritual gifts ? " 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 197 

How shall an acorn become an oak, how 
does the babe become a man ? How, indeed, 
save through the law of steady, persistent 
growth ? There is no other way, no recipe for 
miraculous transformation, no short cut to the 
state of perfection. There is no royal road to 
education in any sphere. 

How shall we grow? How do we reach any 
altitude that lies across our horizon, how climb 
to any summit ? We must first desire and 
make the choice to set forth in that direction. 
Our interests are then centred there, our 
affections are set upon things above, and where 
the heart turns, the will, with all its guiding, 
forceful energy, is enlisted. An all-consuming 
hunger for the true bread of life voices the 
soul's dissatisfaction with present conditions, 
and it is they who feel this blessed hunger 
who assuredly shall be filled. 

Humanity has always grown in the direction 
in which it has chosen to advance. Its loves 
have decided its realization, it has gained what 



198 A LOOK UPWARD 

it reached to grasp. The interests of this 
world have contented a race whose affections 
have been centred there ; mundane pleasures 
have proved all-absorbing, entrancing, a fleeting 
glory the prize to win at any sacrifice ; a false 
wealth has so dazzled human eyes that true 
spiritual riches could not be received. Having 
lived thus, year after year, do human souls now 
inquire, "How shall we grow 5 " Will they 1 
learn the method, or gain a high< ture by 

persistent looking downward for the goal to 
which they would aspire? Does the seedling, 
having gained its ancho in material soil, 

elect to grovel there? Does not its upward- 
reaching lance strive bravely, sturdily, steadily 
every day toward the zenith, and that bright 
magnet which lures it on ? It not only choo 
to grow, it grow ause it feels within the 

pulsing of that mighty, forceful tide of life 
which impels it forward. It grows because it 
must, and grows also by its own inherent 
strength ; it cannot utilize the supply which 
comes to any other plant. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 199 

Know ye not, O brothers, that ye are the 
temples of God ? Your growth likewise will 
be spontaneous when ye become conscious of 
and one with the Omnipotence which dwelleth 
within, when ye forever lose all sense of sepa- 
rateness from the Eternal Source of Life and 
Infinite Power, and realize in every fibre of 
your being* the influx of Divinity. But ye 
cannot grow towards a goal which ye do not 
desire, which finds no habitual lodgement in 
your mind. You become like what you think 
of most. Thought must be centred on spirit- 
ual things, the soul now starved must be fed 
with spiritual meat, not however to the exclu- 
sion of material expressions of life, as in the 
case of the monk or nun, but let the daily 
practical walk and work be lifted above the 
level of drudgery by the spiritualization of 
thought. Let business be purified from the 
selfish greed of gain, and of injustice to our 
brother man, which characterizes present 
competitive systems. 



20O A LOOK UPWARD 

What is it to be spiritually minded ? It is 
to live a life above that of the mundane plane, 
to reach the development of powers hitherto 
unknown, to discover Truth through our own 
realization of the Divine, in short, to reach 
illumination, to feel a lofty inspiration respond 
to every true aspiration. The height you 
would surmount, brother, is within yourself. 
The ineffable Presence dwelleth there, in the 
secret chamber of your own soul. Go to that 
inner sanctuary, and, when you have shut the 
door upon the world's tumult and desires, 
commune with the Author of every good and 
perfect wish. The highest h< aven you can 
reach is your own unfolded spiritual nature 
at its point of contact with the Divine. Throw 
to the winds the old prejudices and beliefs 
in the innate depravity of man. Humanity 
will always mirror the thought in which it is 
held. Look for vice, and you will think it 
into existence ; call the roll of human weak- 
nesses, and each one will answer, "Here." 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 201 

Look for good under the most repelling 
exterior, and the scales will fall from your 
eves to perceive it. Hold .firmly, as your 
basic principle, the total divinity of the human 
race eventually, and you will become a strong 
motive power in its establishment. 

If you would keep your mental atmosphere 
pure and sweet, let the mind never serve as 
a sieve or drain, into which the impurities 
of other people's thoughts are poured. Give 
no ear to the indelicate jest, the idle gossip 
of the hour, or newsy recital of some scandal- 
monger. It may be an o'er-true tale, but we 
once stood where the poor victim now stands. 
She like ourselves is growing slowly, and needs 
the helping hand to climb higher, on to surer 
ground, instead of a thrust to unsettle her 
present slender footing. Sharpen not the 
teeth of self-reproach ; their wounds are deep 
and bitter. Restrain the impatient word. 
" He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than 
he that taketh a city." Prof. Rarey, the 



202 A LOOK UPWARD 

horse-tamer, has known an angry word to 
raise the pulse of a horse ten beats in a 
second. Think of its effect on a child or 
the sensitive heart of a friend. 

The individualized spirit is always pure, as 
were the allegorical children of the garden 
of Eden, from whence they fell into materiality, 
though only in the outer expression. The 
divine germ forever remains inviolate. There 
is a point of equipoise, a central point of per- 
fect calm at the heart of every raging cyclone. 
So the human heart, with it.s stormy passions 
and material appetites, has always one centred 
germ in which the deific calm and peace are 
found, a part that never can be ill, or -row 
weary, the one spark which the true healer 
endeavors to kindle to a flame, the divinity 
which we should always Strive to see in the 
soul of our neighbor. In ourselves, it is the 
inward monitor. How often do we realize its 
reality and power, or render firm allegiance 
to its promptings ? How many hours of our 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 203 

twenty-four do we give to self-examination and 
spiritual upliftment ? Is this a thing that 
should be crowded out ? We devote much 
time to intellectual culture and social demands. 
We have study and reading hours, pay dutiful 
homage at the shrines of music and art, are 
faithful to the practical demands of business ; 
we are punctilious in etiquette, fashion finds 
in us submissive votaries, but how many 
moments from this overflowing repertoire do 
we delightedly give to the quiet chamber and 
the cultivation of enlarged receptivity to the 
divine baptism ? What wonder that spiritual 
growth is slow, that materiality of thought is 
fostered, that harmony is lost, discords increase, 
that envy, pride, and jealousies creep in to 
produce their natural physical results, all these 
errors being only reflections of that separate- 
ness from Divine anchorage so fatal to soul- 
health. 

We have an Oriental precept that reads, 
"Kill out desire for growth;" a strange com- 



204 A LOOK UPWARD 

mand if read according to the letter of the 
word, but the spiritual vision detects its true 
significance. The highest aim of life is to 
kill out all selfness as well as all selfishness, 
and this most laudable desire for spiritual 
growth often cultivates a narrow spirit of 
exclusiveness and personal pride. Therefore 
kill out desire for personal achievement in 
the line of growth, for growth's sake, save as 
by such advancement we can become better 
workers in the vineyard of Truth, the true 
harvest-field of the world. Thoreau, the Con- 
cord philosopher, once exclaimed that " Self- 
congratulation seemed as absurd as for a man 
to break forth into a eulogy on his dog who 
hadn't one." The aim of growth is fruition, 
and that for the good of the world, not alone 
for personal advantage, or the honor which 
may thereby accrue. 

Each shining stem of grain in our rolli 
fields, that grows towards the harvest, drinks 
not nor absorbs all the golden sunshine, the 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 205 

rich wine of earth, the baptism of rain and 
the dews of heaven for its own needs. Its 
whole existence is but a means to a desired 
end, that of fruitful service to others, of 
feeding and nourishing the full expression of 
a larger life than its own, even that of our 
own souls during their season of earthly plant- 
ing and harvesting. Our aim in growth should 
be a similar one, "forgetting self for Love's 
sweet sake," that Love which is the Light 
of the world. An Omnipotent Hand dropped 
the seed of our souls in their mortal environ- 
ments. It is the fruit of the ancestral tree, 
and must in some distant harvest day be true 
to its primal type, which is Divinity. 

Having realized the divine nature of that 
already planted germ, the soul, and the great 
care and watchfulness of the Divine Gardener, 
be not neglectful of its needs. No plant ever 
flourished on intermittent care, and no flower 
ever bloomed beneath the soil. Cumber not 
the germ with layer upon layer of perish- 



206 A LOOK UPWARD 

able rubbish — the driftwood of worldly life. 
Struggle away from material environments and 
stand firmly. Refuse to drift and swash with 
human tides. All possibilities are astir at the 
heart of the seed, but it is weighted by heavy 
clods of passion, pride, and malice, all crumbles 
from the same lump, that of selfishness, the 
universal sin of the world. Then learn self- 
abnegation. The Divinest Soul the world has 
ever known pleased not himself. Each pulse- 
beat of his glorious life from the manger to 
the cross was a breath of noblest sacrifice. 

As we rise nearer the Light, growth is 
Stronger and freer, obstacles lessen and 
decrease. Although self-imposed, they have 
been transmuted into glory, have proved an 
enriching phosphate to the soil in which the 
soul is planted. We have grown beyond those 
parasites which once clung to us, the habits 
of appetite, of thought and speech, of belief 
in separateness from the Divine Health, of 
fear and anxiety lest disease, weakness, or pain 






SPIRITUAL GROWTH 207 

overtake us, mental attitudes which clogged 
our avenues of spiritual supply and blighted 
the fairest buds of promise. Even the ripened 
grain has to undergo the mower's scythe, the 
thresher's flail ; and when the pruning-knife of 
sorrow and bereavement has been used in our 
growth, when the husks have been rudely 
beaten from our hearts, we have counted 
the winnowing process grievous rather than 
joyous, yet afterward it hath yielded richest 
fruit. 

This is the soul's winter-time ; but through 
every experience it bears always the faint 
remembrance of another spring which it has 
known, of warm, sunshiny, ripening days; it 
recalls also the Gardener's granary in the loft 
where it rested until the hour struck for it 
again to come forth and become one of the 
creative energies of the world. 

"Twasa little seed, in the dark cold ground, 
That said, ' Why must I slumber here 
With the mists and the dampness all around, 
Where no ray of light can ever appear?' 



208 A LOOK UPWARD 

And a voice shot down on a beam of the sun, 
One morning before its birth was begun, 
And said, ' Little germ, why murmur you so ? 
It is your business to lie there and grow.' 

A soul within a body chained 
Dropped down to earth, despised, reviled, 
With darkness and with mists inveiled, 
Unconscious of the lip that smiled; 
It said, ' Why am I imprisoned here ? 
Why chained in form of clay so low?' 
And a voice dropped down like an angel's tear, 
* Be patient, soul, 'tis your time to grow.' 

And thus every darkened place of earth 
Holds some secret germ of a brighter day ; 
And where there seems to be mould and dearth, 
There shall the richest glories play. 
And for every struggling soul that sin 
And murmurs in its march so low, 
There shall bud and blossom an angel's wing; 
So toil on, dear hearts, and use time — w" 

We who are " cradled in the lap of a 
progressive Deity " cannot help advance, for 
progress is the order of this mighty universe 
That infinite law everywhere obtains, and in 
that soul which now seems enshrouded in error 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 209 

and ignorance, or steeped in the dregs of 
infamy, the Voice of Infinite Truth, Harmony, 
and Peace will yet sound through every dark- 
ened chamber, and even that soul will one day 
rejoice in its own god-hood. We rest in the 
hollow of our Father's hand always, and shall 
some day sound our paean of triumphant glad- 
ness, because at last we have grown. 



210 A LOOK UPWARD 



CHAPTER XVI 



EMANCIPATION 



During the closing decade of this nineteenth 
century, and in this free and masterful republic, 
a revolution of thought has been inaugurated 
whose culmination none can foretell. The 
present age also marks the growth of a new 
and helpful religion for the masses. Socialistic, 
nationalistic, and other altruistic societies are 
striving with noble purpose and intent to 
advance the race to a higher vanta. und 

than it has yet gained That the world is ripe 
for such effort is proven by the rapid, universal 
acceptance of this growthful impulse ; but it 
moves as a heterogeneous mass without indi- 
vidual culture and illumination, moves with the 
weightiest of its old burdens unlifted. It still 



EMANCIPATION 211 

carries its load of physical infirmities, of 
liability to contagion and disorder ; indeed, the 
ideal republic of A. D. 2000, as pictured in 
Bellamy's immortal dream, makes provision for 
a certain yearly amount of medical service, an 
element of weakness quite unnecessary and 
inconsistent with true national greatness, a 
heresy most unacceptable to those who have 
already and forever outgrown such bondage. 
More than this, while the worthy national 
reformer struggles bravely onward with bright- 
est hope and purest purpose, he remains in 
ignorance of himself, of the true nature of the 
individual man, his own innate divinity and 
omnipotence. Self-know T ledge is the key of 
power. It is the illuminated ones who have 
alwavs led the race to higher levels of thought 
and action, who have inspired humanity to a 
grander achievement and unfoldment. And 
that illumination is not an especial gift to the 
few. It has been won, a step at a time, by 
every soul. It is possible for all, being only 



212 A LOOK UPWARD 

the realization and appropriation of that 
universal Divine Radiance which knows no 
eclipse. 

The demonstration of Spiritual Science in 
our midst to-day is a mighty lever toward that 
realization, toward the freedom, upliftment, and 
spiritualization of all who are in any bondage. 
It strikes off the fetters of material thraldom, 
purifies the baser desires of the animal soul, 
imprisons that lower nature, develops spiritual 
consciousness, and reveals the path which leads 
to Truth's high altar. 

What a glorious freedom for the human race 
stands on the threshold of this half-open door. 
What a mission to be agencies in the turning 
of those slow, rust}' hinges firmly set with age 
and disuse ; in sweeping away the rubbish 
which has accumulated at the very entrance ; 
in preparing the world to receive the full radi- 
ance which shall burst upon its blind eyes, 
through those widening portals, — a glory that 
goes beyond, ignores even the need of lifting 



EMANCIPATION 213 

physical burdens, a baptism of the spirit that 
shall unfold powers of the soul, latent so long, 
will discover to each and every soul that it 
is a son of God with deific possibilities. To be 
pioneers in the early dawn of this millennium 
should fill our hearts with gratitude and conse- 
cration. 

What a world it will become under the 
influence of this advanced thought ; for the 
globe itself can outgrow its immaturity, its 
convulsive, cyclonic conditions, only as the 
mind of man that works upon it is perfected. 
When we breathe forth fairer flowers of 
thought, and bear a riper spiritual fruitage, we 
shall be the Floras and Pomonas to grant, as 
did the fabled goddesses of yore, an abundant 
harvest, a richer type of fruit and blossom than 
the slow-growing planet has ever known. It 
reflects our imperfection now ; but the divine 
pattern set, the life that, sharing the glory of 
His life, cannot be wholly dimmed, shines 
through at every crevice. 



214 A LOOK UPWARD 

One with God, consciously one with His all- 
pervasive energy and universal will, what of 
growth may we not attain, what errors over- 
come, what of nature may we not control? 
The Eastern magician has acquired the power 
of gathering Nature's forces, or of concentrat- 
ing her slower methods into a few moments of 
time so that the mango seed is planted, 
germinates, grows, and blossoms before the 
astonished beholder's gaze ; but we do not 
crave to be wonder-workers, to demonstrate our 
soul-unfoldment on a material plane, but rather, 
by spiritually germinating seed-thoughts in 
other souls, to advance their growth toward 
perfection. 

The Eastern mind is contemplative, intro- 
spective, a quality encouraged, perhaps, by 
condition of climate and modes of lif< The 
Western type is one of greater force, — intel- 
lectual force, however, rather than spiritual 
supremacy. A union of the two, a utilization 
of their joint wealth, a spiritual practicalization 



EMANCIPATION 21 5 

of occult truth, a fuller revelation of divine 
wisdom, so long hidden from the masses, would 
give birth to a new humanity, one emancipated 
from every fetter, physical or creedal, thereby 
attaining that illumination which is the inalien- 
able birthright of every child of God. 



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